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SCIENCE AND CULTURE SERIES 
Joseph Husslein, S.J., Ph.D., General Editor 




THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

or 

Procrustes at Large 



1 he iVienace or the rierd 



or 



1 rocrustes at Large 



Ewcdixos Tolvvv ovk i£ aWrj'i iroAirttas nyjavns KaOicrrarai i) Ik 
S^OKpaTtas. — nAATON, IIOAITEIA. 

La democratic a done deux exces a eviter: L'esprit d'inegalite, 
qui la mene a l'aristocratie ou au gouvernement d'un seul; et 
l'esprit d'egalite extreme, qui la conduit au despotisme d'un seul. 
Montesquieu, L'Esprit des Lois, VIII, 2. 



FRANCIS STUART CAMPBELL 



THE BRUCE PUBLISHING COMPANY 
MILWAUKEE 



Copyright, 1943, by The Bruce Publishing Company 
Made in the United States of America 



This book is dedicated to all those who 
defend our freedom in all five continents 
of this earth, with the sword, not the pen. 



Pro-crus'tes (pro-krus'tez) (Gr. Antiq.) A celebrated 
legendary highwayman of Attica who tied his victims 
upon an iron bed, and, as the case required, either 
stretched or cut off their legs to adapt them to its 
length — whence the metaphorical phrase, the bed of 
Procrustes. — Webster's International Dictionary, 
1902, p. 1142. 



PREFACE BY THE GENERAL EDITOR 

Vigorously written and profoundly concerned with problems of the hour, 
this book will come as a challenge to many. 

For an undertaking of this nature world contacts are needed, and these 
the author possesses in an unusual degree. His continued travels have 
made of him a citizen of the world, with international sympathies and 
close familiarity with a score of languages. 

His pictures, therefore, of the European scene are not pieced together 
out of other people's books. They are derived from personal observation 
of the character and traditions of the various nations considered. Par- 
ticularly important, too, is his knowledge of the geographic conformation 
of the different countries in which the numerous types of European 
society have developed side by side through the centuries. 

As for America, the writer has set foot within each state of the Union, 
keenly observant always, and no less keenly appraising all that he saw. 
If at times he criticizes severely certain aspects of American life, it is 
only because he loves America and admires it, and so would wish the 
false ore to be cleansed away where it mingles with the gold. Thus, 
referring to the problems that today confront the country, he says: 

"America may be far quicker in understanding these issues than the 
outsider is ready to believe. It is of little importance that America at 
present has less of a visible tradition than Europe and a smaller intel- 
lectual aristocracy, but in no country in the world is there such a furious 
hunger for culture and intellectual values, such craving for true per- 
sonality, such wonderful seeking for the beautiful things of life. America 
will understand." 

The author's breadth of view is accounted for, no doubt, still further 
by the fact that his graduate studies were made in America, England, 
and continental Europe. Yet it is not the popular cause which he espouses 
at any cost. Rather, like a Roland come to the Dark Tower, he winds 
his horn and blows his blast in defense of true liberty and genuine 
culture, as he honestly conceives of them. 



X PREFACE BY THE GENERAL EDITOR 

His attitude toward democracy is essentially that of the Founding 
Fathers, as indicated in his important first chapter, "What of 
Democracy?" 

Without anticipating his views here it may be stressed that in its use 
of the word democracy the world has run mad in our day. America itself 
has in this regard come perilously near to the ancient Babel, with just 
the difference that each man now believes he understands his neighbor, 
while in reality their concepts are leagues apart. 

"Heaven high, hell deep" is a phrase borrowed from Browning that 
may be none too strong to describe the divergence possibly existing in 
the minds of two chance persons who in the same crowded hall applaud 
together the same blessed word democracy as it bursts in a climax of 
oratory from the speaker's platform. 

To one it signifies no less than a Gospel concept of the ideal human 
relations that should exist within a commonwealth. To the other it 
definitely imports the opiate Marxian dream, to be ushered in by the 
red dawn of the communist World Revolution. And between these two 
extremes — could we but visualize for ourselves the minds of the audience 
— we might find a complete spectrum of diversified meanings for this 
one single word, from the ultraviolet of the confirmed optimist to the 
ultrared of the thoroughgoing Bolshevist. 

Communism, in fact, has practically dropped its own label for what 
it declares to be its perfect synonym, democracy. 

"You are a Fascist or a Democrat," runs the argument addressed to 
the crowd, "and if a Democrat you must be a Communist, for commu- 
nism is the only genuine democracy." To make such arguments effective 
constant repetition suffices, according to the tactics expressly set forth 
by Adolf Hitler, past master in the art. Thus communist funds have been 
known to swell to a high tide with the money gathered from the newly 
gained "friends of democracy." 

Here, then, is a matter for serious consideration. Closely allied with 
it is the question of equality. 

To understand the statement of the Founding Fathers that all men 
are "created equal" we must look at it in the light of their own daily 
practice, which was worlds removed from the equality postulated by 
the French Revolution. They were as a body, believing men. Human 
equality consisted for them in the creation of all men by God, their 
equal redemption and final judgment, together with the consequent 
dignity of the human person and the rights assured to individuals and 



PREFACE BY THE GENERAL EDITOR XI 

families by the natural law. But as for human society itself, they frankly 
recognized it as composed of unequal elements and sought their political 
solution in a Representative Republic. It is that form of government 
which still remains to us, despite the persistent efforts of those who 
have been carrying on the termite work of weakening its wisely planned 
and powerful supports. Under such circumstances there is need of 
watchfulness and enlightened patriotism. 

Lastly, no little space is here devoted to the explanation of develop- 
ments that led up to World War I, and to the considerations which the 
author believes will be imperative when representatives of the belligerent 
nations in this war at length foregather around the peace table. It is in 
this connection that he pleads for an intelligent understanding of the 
long traditions of the nations concerned, of their historic background, of 
the political institutions most different from our own that are perhaps 
needed on their part to stabilize the future peace. Then it is that mercy 
and truth must meet, that charity and justice must rule, and that God 
may not be disregarded. All other peace would only be a second dismal 
failure, another willful defiance flung in the face of high heaven. America 
cannot stand for that! 

J. H. 



CONTENTS 



Preface by the General Editor 
What of Democracy? 



IX 

1 



PART I: THE CULT OF SAMENESS 
I Identity Versus Diversity 
II Ochlocracy and Democratism . 

III The Bourgeois and Capitalism 

IV Ochlocratic Culture . 
V Woman Today .... 



IS 
31 
SO 
72 
93 



PART II : IDENTITARIANISM IN TIME AND SPACE 

I Monarchy 103 

II The Age of Parliamentarianism and Republicanism . .126 
III World War I 138 

PART III : CASE HISTORIES. A. THE GERMANIES 
B. THE UNITED STATES 

I The German Scene 163 

II National Socialism and the Third Reich . . .189 

III "Mater Americae" 217 

IV The American Scene 226 

V The American Tragedy 257 

xiii 



XIV CONTENTS 

PART IV: THE ISSUE 

I Communism 277 

II World War II 287 

III Odds and Ends 310 

APPENDICES 

I Notes 321 

II The Twofold Aspects of Man 379 

III Chart of "Modern Civilization" 380 

IV A. A Catholic Germany and the National-Socialist Party . 382 
B. Catholics in East Prussia and National Socialism . .383 

V The Treaty of Brest Litovsk 384 

Index 385 



WHAT OF DEMOCRACY? 

(An explanatory note.) 

To put in its right light and scientific context the technical word democ- 
racy is naturally our first task. Representative government as established 
in the United States is not synonymous with democracy. The Founding 
Fathers established a republic {res publico., polit&ia), not a democracy. 
And many of the Founders of the Constitution of this country have re- 
peatedly emphasized this fact in so many words. Some of the best 
American minds have again and again called attention to this important 
fact and have protested loudly against the use of the term democracy 
for the fundamental laws of their country, which they respect and by 
which they abide.* 

It is outside the scope of this book to investigate here the history of 
the popularization of the term democracy for the American Constitution 
or American ideals. We will merely consider it as a fact that there is 
not one, but that there are dozens of modern, popular interpretations of 
this expression. As a matter of fact, the vast majority of the population 
of the United States uses it to denote anything at random with which 
they agree in the realm of politics, social life, and economics. We will 
only quote a few examples: 

Mr. Green, the millionaire, shakes hands with workers. He is "demo- 
cratic." (He is, as a matter of fact, demophil, but not democratic which 
latter word is derived from d&mos, the [common] people, and krdtos, 
power.) 

Mr. Gray protests against censorship as undemocratic. (Censorship 
may be illiberal — against freedom — but not necessarily against the 
majority.) 

Mr. Black is against Negro lynching, denouncing it as undemocratic. 
(As soon as the majority of a township wants to hang a Negro this 
action is un-Christian, illegal, but certainly very democratic.) 

Mr. Red extols the icebox and the shower as the pillar of our "demo- 
cratic life." (This is plain nonsense but of frequent occurrence.) 



* See the letter of Mr. William S. Bennet, prominently displayed in the New York 
Times, Apr. S, 1942. 



2 WHAT OF DEMOCRACY? 

Finally one and the same thing can be considered to be democratic 
and undemocratic at the same time : for instance, the New Deal, Tuxedo 
Club, Presidential acts, prices of fur coats, British accents, China, 
Russia, England — all according to individual likes and dislikes. Com- 
munists call their creed "streamlined democracy" or "Twentieth-Century 
Americanism." 

We see, then, from the plurality of present-day connotations of democ- 
racy that it would be thoroughly unjustified to use the term "democracy" 
in any other sense than in the classical and universal one.* We may 
well agree that the mischief started by uneducated popularizers has 
already reached such proportions that a Hercules is needed to clean 
this Augian stable of popular misconceptions, false labels, and mis- 
presented ideologies. Even some of the more intelligent writers have 
become a prey to popular pressure, and as modern intellectuals do not 
lead the masses any more, but follow them and subordinate their ideas 
and language to the demands of the market, the confusion has now 
reached its climax. 

Before offering any further reasons regarding the deeper implications 
of the use and misuse of the term democracy we shall give some views 
on the American Constitution as expressed by the Founding Fathers and 
by distinguished modern writers. It will be seen that the classical and 
scientific meaning of that word remained unchanged for 2300 years, not- 
withstanding the scandalous ignorance displayed by editors, teachers, 
college professors, stump orators, and other irresponsible persons who 
are prominent in the public eye. 

Thus the trend toward democracy in the modern age is deplored by 
Harry F. Atwood in his book Back to the Republic where he writes : 

We have drifted from the republic toward democracy: from statesmanship 
to demagogism; from excellent to inferior service. It is an age of retrogressive 
tendencies. 

J. Hampden Doherty in the Electoral System in the United States 
confirms similarly our opinion when he writes: 

The tendency in this democratic age is to overlook the fact that the 
Fathers of the Constitution were not believers in the rule of the people, and 
it was not until after 1800 that manhood suffrage was adopted in any of 
the States. 



* Apart from the fact that we rather borrow our terminology from the Fathers of 
the Constitution than from radio commentators or the speakers at women's clubs. 



WHAT OF DEMOCRACY? 3 

Dealing with the current criticism of the Constitution at his time, 
Madison, in the Federalist, says : 

It seems to owe its rise and prevalence chiefly to the confounding of a 
republic with a democracy, applying to the former reasonings drawn from 
the nature of the latter. The true distinction between these two forms was 
also adverted to on a former occasion. It is, that in a democracy, the people 
exercise the government in person: in a republic they administer it by their 
representatives (No. 14). 

Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia, in his booklet Why 
Should We Change Our Form of Government ? (New York, 1912), writes : 

Aristotle has pointed out that democracy has many points of resemblance 
with tyranny. It was he who first told us how a democracy as well as a 
tyranny, may become a despotism. 

It is just as easy for a majority to become a despot as for a monarch to 
become a tyrant. Even a tyrant may be benevolent, even a democratic 
despotism may be malevolent (pp. 29 and 30). 

Hamilton, who held at the beginning certain monarchical views in order 
to exchange them later for aristocratic opinions, opposed the republic. 
Gouverneur Morris shrewdly said: 

"... he confounded it with democratical government." Morris, though he 
shared Hamilton's dislike of democracy, thus early saw the confusion of re- 
publicanism with democracy that so long existed in men's mind. — (Ency- 
clopaedia Britannica, Vol. 7, 1937, p. 183.) 

Today democracy is confused with liberalism,* freedom, and prosperity 
alike. 

About the truly liberal-whiggish Fathers Ralph Adams Cram writes 
in his The End of Democracy (Boston, 1937, p. 20) : 

I apologize to the revered memory of Washington, Adams, Madison, 
Gerry, and all their fellows for attributing to them any intellectual com- 
merce with democracy, for if they feared anything it was precisely this; 
whereby their prevision was highly justified. As Mr. Nock says: "One some- 
times wonders how our Revolutionary forefathers would take it if they 
could hear some flatulent political thimblerigger charge them with having 
founded 'the great and glorious democracy of the West.' " Of course, as we 
know now, they never intended to do anything of that sort. 

And later he adds : 

The Constitution of 1787 was, then, what may be called an aristocratic 
republican form of organic law with no salient democratic features. 



* About its confusion with liberty see the text concerning liberalism. 



4 WHAT OF DEMOCRACY? 

Alexander Hamilton attacked democracy violently in his speeches on 
June 21, 1788, "On the Compromise of Constitution," and in the Federal 
Convention on June 26, 1787. Democracy, so-called "Jeffersonian democ- 
racy," was assailed in poetical form by such anonymous writers as Dr. 
Christopher Caustic in his "Democracy Unveiled or Tyranny Stripped 
of the Garb of Patriotism" (Boston, 1805). Yet Jefferson was no democrat 
in the current sense ; he believed in the rule of the best, not in the rule 
of the masses. This is evident when he writes: 

The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature, for 
the instruction, the trusts and government of society. And indeed, it would 
have been inconsistent in creation to have formed men for the social state, 
and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the con- 
cerns of society. May we not even say that that form of government is the 
best which provides most effectually for a pure selection of these natural 
aristoi into the offices of government? — {Letter to John Adams, Oct. 28, 
1814). 

This belief in an elite is not very "democratic." Sometimes Jefferson's 
vocabulary was rather unfitting for "progressive" ears; this seems ap- 
parent when he deals with the possibility of a large urban proletariat in 
America which by destroying the agricultural character of the country 
would make even representative government unworkable. He wrote in 
the same letter quoted above : 

Every one by his property, or by his satisfactory situation, is interested 
in the support of law and order. And such men may safely and advanta- 
geously reserve to themselves wholesome control over their public affairs, and 
a degree of freedom, which in the hands of the canaille of the cities of 
Europe, would be instantly perverted to the demolition and destruction of 
everything public. 

This view is supplemented by a fear of an industrial development in 
the United States. He wrote on December 20, 1787, to Madison: 

I think that our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as 
long as they are chiefly agricultural: and this will be as long as there are 
vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another 
as in the large cities of Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe. — 
(Both letters quoted from J. T. Adams Jeffersonian Principles and Hamil- 
tonian Principles, Boston, 1932.) 

His hatred against the urban masses can also be seen in other letters 
and essays: 

The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure govern- 



WHAT OF DEMOCRACY? S 

ment, as sores do to the strength of the human body. — (Volume I, p. 403, 
Writings of Jefferson, Washington edition.) 

and: 

I consider the class of artificers as the panderers of vice, and the instru- 
ments by which the liberties of a country are generally overturned. — (Vol- 
ume I, p. 403.) 

These are views which few medieval writers would have expressed 
with such crudity. They are certainly not the author's and they are only 
quoted in order to exhort the reader to exercise greater discretion in 
alluding to the problem of Jeffersonian "democracy." 

Another author stressing the strictly nondemocratic character of the 
Constitution (and of historic America) is E. M. Burns who writes in 
his volume James Madison, Philosopher of the Constitution (New 
Brunswick, 1938) : 

Instead of defending the absolute sovereignty of the majority, Madison 
detested it so strongly that he sought in almost every conceivable way to 
prevent its exercise (page 63). 

A good analysis of the American Constitution is also given by Andrew 
Cunningham MacLaughlin in the Proceedings of the American Anti- 
quarian Society (New Series, Volume 22) under the title: "Democracy 
and Constitution." As to the definitions he writes: 

In any examination concerning the popular character of institutions we 
need to recognize the value and significance of words, and there is no more 
carelessly used [word] in the language than "democratic." Democracy, as 
we use the word, may mean individualism, that is freedom from restraint, 
opportunity to do what one will without governmental encroachment or 
restriction; and, where individualism exists, the spirit of individualism and 
of individual self-reliance is apt to exist. But democracy may mean equality, 
and the spirit of equality may be quite contrary to the spirit of individualism, 
though it is possible that the two may go hand in hand. Again democracy may 
mean the right of the authority of the masses of the people to manage their 
own affairs and to make use of the government for their own interests. 
Democracy in this latter sense may be in absolute and complete conflict 
with individualism or even with equality. There is no reason for the co- 
existence of any two of these three principles which we commonly cover by 
the convenient word democracy or democratic (p. 296). 

"Excusing" the Founding Fathers for their lack of what is scientific 
democracy he writes: 

Just that kind of government [i.e., democracy] was not in accord with 



6 WHAT OF DEMOCRACY? 

popular desire in 1787, the stirring watchword of American life was Liberty 
(p. 310). 

And further he again states plainly: 

It cannot be said that the Constitution of the United States has retarded 
the growth of democracy, but in the interest of historical accuracy it needs 
to be said that it did not establish democracy. 

The conflict between democracy and liberty to which A. C. MacLaughlin 
alluded was also well known by Calhoun who wrote in his famous Dis- 
quisition on Government (New York, 1853) : 

There is another error, not less great and dangerous, usually associated 
with the one which just has been considered. I refer to the opinion, that 
liberty and equality are so intrinsically united, that liberty cannot be per- 
fect without perfect equality (p. 56). 

and his attack against democratic majoritism becomes more concrete 
when he writes: 

Liberty is little more than a mere name under all governments of the abso- 
lute form, including that of the numerical majority, and can only have a 
secure and durable existence under those of the concurrent or constitutional 
form (p. 60). 

Returning to an earlier period we want to quote the opinions of John 
Adams, second president of the United States. In his famous work, A 
Defense of the Constitution of the United States of America (Volume 
III, new edition, London, 1794), he asserts that the following proposi- 
tions can be proved to be true : 

1. No democracy ever did or can exist. 

2. If, however, it were admitted, for argument sake, that a democracy 
ever did or can exist, no such passion as a love of democracy stronger than 
self-love . . . ever did, or ever can, prevail in the minds of the citizens in 
general. 

3. That if the citizens . . . preferred the public to his private in- 
terest ... it would not be from . . . love of the democracy, but from reason, 
conscience, etc. 

4. That no love of equality, at least since Adam's fall, ever existed. 

5. That no love of frugality ever existed as a passion, but always as a 
virtue. 

6. That therefore the democracies of Montesquieu ... are all mere frag- 
ments of his brain, and delusive imaginations. 

7. That his passion of love of the democracy would be, in the members 
of the majority only a love of the majority. . . . 

8. That his love of equality would not even be pretended toward the 



WHAT OF DEMOCRACY? 7 

members of the minority but the semblance of it would only be kept up 
among the members of the majority. . . . 

11. That in reality the word democracy signifies nothing more or less 
than a nation or people without any government at all. . . . 

12. That every attentive reader may perceive that the notions of Mon- 
tesquieu, concerning a democracy, are imaginations of his own derived from 
the contemplation of the reveries of Xenophon and of Plato, concerning 
equality of goods and community of wives and children, in their delirious 
ideas of a perfect commonwealth (pp. 493-495). 

"Democracy" as an ideal of the Founding Fathers is equally denied 
by W. H. Hamilton and D. Adair in The Power to Govern (New York, 
1937, p. 158). It must also be borne in mind that the protest against 
calling the Constitution democratic comes from historians of all groups, 
yet while Rightists praise lack of "democracy" in the Constitution, 
"Leftists" like Charles Beard* and H. Rugg are prone to condemn it 
outright. 

We have already once cautioned the reader against the concept of 
"Jeffersonian democracy." Thomas Jefferson never called himself a demo- 
crat and the word democrat is only mentioned once in the Monticello 
edition — as an accusation leveled against him by Hamilton. In his 
letter addressed to Washington on May 17, 1792, he called himself a 
"Republican Federalist," and in his first inaugural address as President 
he said : "We are all Federalists, we are all Republicans." When Andrew 
Jackson ran against John Q. Adams for the presidency in 1828 he was 
called by some of his followers (as both candidates were Republican) a 
"democratic-republican." Van Buren called himself a Republican and 
the unfortunate label "democratic" was used again by F. Pierce in 1852. 
Since that time it became increasingly popular with some people. Others 
protested and go on protesting. 

We have said before that it is difficult to find the exact reasons for 
the growing popularity of the word democracy and democratic taken 
from a dead language which is thoroughly nonunderstandable to 999 out of 
1000 Americans. The decline of classical education in favor of progressive 
"self-realization" has favored the increased use of wrong labels. It is 
deplorable that even Catholics have become victims of this chaos in 
verbiage. They have naturally "their" democracy, the Leftists have 



* Charles A. and Mary R. Beard wrote : "As was said afterwards, the founders of the 
Republic in general, whether Federalist or Republican, feared democracy more than they 
feared original sin." (America in Midpassage, New York, 1939, Vol. Ill, p. 922.) About 
the use of the word democratic between 1865 and the close of the century, see p. 923 
of the same book. 



8 WHAT OF DEMOCRACY? 

"another one,"* and even Conservatives indulge in the worship of a 
thing called "democracy" with a thoroughly different content. The only 
way out would be to discard the label completely, restore it brutally to 
its pristine meaning, and to call the things hitherto covered by the label 
with their proper names. 

There is something pathetic in seeing Americans almost daily besmirch- 
ing unconsciously their ideals and their traditions — all thanks to a 
faulty education. The Founding Fathers would turn in their graves if 
they could hear themselves called "Democrats"; America indeed was 
never a democracy, and never will be . . . unless we make "democracy 
work," and replace, within the framework of a "pure democracy," our 
legislation by the Gallup Poll. Those who have been taught the wrong 
interpretation may ask their money back from the schools where they 
have wasted their adolescence. And the textbooks which preach a spuri- 
ous democracy may still provide us with fuel in cold days to come. 

This protest against the use of the word democracy is not a mere 
pedantic fight against a technical term. "Democracy" should be dis- 
carded as quickly as possible from our vocabulary; it should only be 
used in its classical connotation. The reason for such a reform lies in 
the world-wide implications of technical terms. America is not a democ- 
racy. We are not fighting for democracy. We fight for liberty. America 
not only fights for its own survival, for its own liberty, but also for 
liberty abroad. Human dignity can never be preserved without liberty. 
Liberty is therefore a real good, a precious good worth while to be re- 
deemed by blood. 

Yet by calling this great struggle a fight for democracy, we are implying 
a fight for a political ideal which is not ours and which even in some 
of its journalistic-popular connotations is shared by only a tiny minority 
of our allies. Russia may be a democracy according to St. Thomas, but 
it is no democracy according to popular conception (confounding it with 
liberal popular representation). Perhaps it matters little in the case of 
Russia which momentarily is our military, not our ideological ally. But 
India, China, Greece, Serbia, Austria . . . are these "democracies," in 
the popular or classical sense? Does Europe nourish a nostalgia for 
either form of democracy? Or is there not rather the world over a des- 
perate craving for liberty, personal liberty, group liberty, national lib- 



* Mob democracy is, needless to say, nearest to the concepts of St. Thomas. Thus 
by a play of circumstances their terminology is more accurate than that of some low- 
brow Catholics. 



WHAT OF DEMOCRACY? 9 

erty, religious liberty? Are we not rather going to win the world over 
to our side by appealing to the unquenched thirst of liberty without 
which, as we have said, there can be no realization of human dignity and 
personality ? 

One must be very blind not to be aware that the term "democratic" 
is very sparingly used in the great enunciations of our time. It appears 
sometimes in proclamations and speeches of the President calculated for 
home consumption, as a concession to the mass mind, but in the great, 
programmatic speeches, in the Atlantic Charter, in the outlines of the 
Four Freedoms, "democracy" figures nowhere — and rightly so. The 
Wilsonian blunders will not be repeated. The crime to proclaim that 
the world should be made safe for democracy against which the Found- 
ing Fathers had violently protested will not take place again. The arti- 
ficial fostering of allegedly American ideas belongs to the past. America 
of today and tomorrow will help other nations to live, to breathe, to be 
themselves again, to find their own forms and their own destinies free 
from the fetters of foreign occupation, of demagogues and mystagogues, 
of quislings and paid traitors. E pluribus unum, the constructive prin- 
ciple of federation, In God We Trust, the recognition of God's limitless 
fatherhood — these two watchwords, together with that of Liberty, 
should be our creed, not that spurious label democracy which our Amer- 
ican forebears despised and execrated. 

Yet in spite of all these considerations, in order not to increase the 
already existing chaos, we have made a compromise with the existing 
misuse and abuse of the word democracy. The issue is furthermore 
complicated by the fact that a large political party in the United States 
calls itself "Democratic." 

In order to denote the classical interpretation of democracy as well as 
its cultural concomitant we have chosen to use the word ochlocracy and 
— as its adjective — ochlocratic* The Greeks used this expression strictly 
in the sense of mob rule, regardless whether these mobs created majorities 
or minorities. The selection is not a very happy one, and the reader is 
reminded that we understand under "mob" not the "lower classes," but 
just the vast masses of inferior people which can be found everywhere ; 
these products of a soulless culture and civilization who in their terrify- 
ing mediocrity are neither fish nor flesh, have neither face nor expres- 



* The expression democracy in the notes, Appendix I, as used by American and foreign 
authorities, has its classical, standard meaning and is equivalent to the term ochlocracy 



in the text. 



10 WHAT OF DEMOCRACY? 

sion, neither wisdom nor knowledge, piety nor enthusiasm, faith nor 
charity, hatred nor love, those who go neither with the angels nor the 
devils and because of their lukewarmness will be spat out by our Lord 
on the day of reckoning. 

A few times we have used for the cultural and sociological phenomena 
of democracy the word democratism. This expression puts stress on the 
totalitarian (all-embracing, all-controlling) tendencies of democracy as an 
ism. The reason we did not stick more closely to that term lies in the 
fact that its adjective form, "democratic," is highly unaesthetic from 
a phonetic point of view. 

(The Museum of Modern Art of New York presented, in a photographic 
exhibition in 1941, a picture of a crowded beach on Long Island during 
a summer holiday. Its title was significantly enough "democratism.") 

With the word "democracy" and "democratic" we will ironically denote 
one or the other of the current popular misconceptions styled democracy 
by its advocates. 

Valid ideals, on the other hand, which are used under the misnomer 
democracy can easily be called with some other, more fitting, name. 
Some of the so-called "democratic" institutions are just plainly republi- 
can, Catholic, Christian, decent, traditional, American, fair, conventional. 

In the linguistic usage of the Left, "democratic" denotes much more 
frequently highly negative values. Everybody is acquainted with the 
real meaning of such expressions as "making democracy work in the 
classroom" which just stands for lack of discipline, or "democratizing 
literature" which means plain trash. "Democracy in the factory" may 
mean either striking or strike breaking, according to the advocate. 

Catholics are unfortunately inclined to speak of "democracy as we 
mean it," yet there are in America about a hundred different types of 
"democracy," each held to be "real democracy, democracy as it was meant 
by the Founding Fathers, democracy as we all ( ?) understand it." But 
the Founding Fathers, although they had very clear and concise ideas, 
wanted personally no democracy, and the only way out of the chaos is 
to go back like good children to the giants of the past, be they theologians 
like St. Thomas, philosophers like Plato, or statesmen like the authors 
of the Federalist. Confusion of words and meanings leads to the con- 
fusion of minds, and the confusion of minds breeds upheavals and revo- 
lution, as a well-known American once rightly pointed out. 



WHAT OF DEMOCRACY? 11 

Europe which alone has produced great democratic upheavals (the 
French, Russian, and German revolutions) is today in a far more imme- 
diate danger to fall a victim to mass-madness than America ever was. 
Not in vain has the knife of the guillotine glittered in Paris and not in 
in Philadelphia. Naturally there are also democratic tendencies in Amer- 
ica but these are not by their very nature American. America always 
stood for liberty and personal worth, ideals incompatible with classical 
and scientific democracy and democratism. 

It is almost in the strictly classical sense of the Greek word ochlocracy, 
to which reference has just been made, that the United States Army Mili- 
tary Manual* defines democracy in Section IX, Lesson 9, on "Repre- 
sentative Government." Having first described autocracy as resulting 
in "arbitrariness, tyranny, and oppression," it goes on to what it con- 
siders the opposite extreme: 

Democracy : 

A government of the masses. 

Authority derived through mass meetings or any other form of "direct" 
expression. 

Results in mobocracy. 

Attitude toward property is communistic — negating property rights. 

Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether 
it be based upon deliberation or government by passion, prejudice, and im- 
pulse, without restraint or regard to consequences. 

Results in demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy (p. 91). 

In the passage that follows, the United States Army Military Manual 
strongly contrasts the three forms of government : autocracy, democracy, 
and "representative government — the American experiment," describing 
the last named as "the golden mean between autocracy and democracy." 
It reads: 

Autocracy declares the divine right of kings; its authority cannot be 
questioned; its powers are arbitrarily or unjustly administered. 

Democracy is the "direct" rule of the people and has been repeatedly 
tried without success. 

Our Constitutional fathers, familiar with the strength and weakness of 
both autocracy and democracy, with fixed principles definitely in mind, de- 
fined a representative republican form of government. They "made a very 
marked distinction between a republic and a democracy . . . and said re- 
peatedly and emphatically that they had founded a republic." 



* Military Manual published in 1928 and in use for the succeeding four years. 
(TM 2000-2S) 



12 WHAT OF DEMOCRACY? 

Madison, in the Federalist, emphasized the fact that this government was 
a republic and not a democracy, the Constitution makers having considered 
both an autocracy and a democracy as undesirable forms of government 
while "a republic . . . promises the cure for which we are seeking" (p. 92). 

While many may consider the government established by the Found- 
ing Fathers as a constitutional democracy, it is clear that no such idea 
entered into the mind of those from whom Americans derive their form 
of government, nor did these men give coloring to such an interpretation 
by their own actions.* 

As a test of the sincerity of their attitude toward human liberty, the 
question of slavery naturally enters into consideration here. The dis- 
establishment of it was not accomplished at once, but was definitely 
aimed at by the Founding Fathers, and steps in that direction were 
taken progressively. Charles Carroll led the way by actually introducing 
into the Maryland Legislature a motion for its complete abolition, but 
this was premature. George Washington at his death freed all his slaves, 
as did also others of the Founding Fathers. Nothing, however, could be 
more convincing than the Constitutional clause demanding that after 
twenty years (in 1808) the slave trade was to be abolished. In the north- 
ern colonies this took place at an early date. Such measures, of course, 
in no way implied a desire for any other form of government than that 
of a Representative Republic. 



* Cf. Stringfellow Barr's article "Ourselves Again" in Tomorrow, Oct., 1942. Condensed 
reprint in the Catholic Digest, Nov., 1942. This essay of the president of St. John's, 
Annapolis, not only evaluates democracy correctly, but also gives an outline of Hitler's 
democratic background. 



PART I 

THE CULT OF SAMENESS 



"We are not a Christian civilization; democracy is not a Christian inven- 
tion." — Freda Kirchwey in The Nation, November 3, 1940. 

"I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds 
and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displac- 
ing all that exists, or that has been produced in the past, under opposite in- 
fluences." — Walt Whitman, Democratic Vistas. 



I 

IDENTITY VERSUS DIVERSITY 



"It is surprising to observe how constantly we 

find all our political questions complicated 

with theology." — Proudhon. 

In order to understand history in general and the issues of our troubled 
times in particular we must bear well in mind that political movements, 
political forms and establishments, are always based on instincts, sen- 
timents, conceptions, and tendencies deeply seated in our souls. Even 
those who would like to see the word soul substituted by the term 
"glands" will have to admit that successful political ideas must have an 
appeal somewhere deep in our personalities. They can hardly be based 
on sheer intellectual suppositions. 

Great stress has been put in the past on facts related to character, such 
as introversion and extroversion, individualism and collectivism — aspects 
which do not lack a certain inner connection. Yet they should be supple- 
mented by another pair of mutually antagonistic human trends which 
have been hitherto neglected by political psychologists. One of these 
trends stands for identity and uniformity, while its counterpart expresses 
the yearning for diversity. 

The former is an animalistic instinct which we have in common with 
all gregarious animals. It urges us to seek the company of our "equals," 
to move in the society of people of our own social status, of our tastes, 
our likes and dislikes, our race and political conviction, our cultural 
background, our financial strength, and perhaps even of our sex. 

Aristotle says that man is a "political animal," but this trait of our 
character is not necessarily a consequence of the fact that we are created 
in the image of God. God is not a "social animal," yet sheep, wolves, 
and monkeys undoubtedly are, and so also in the insect world locusts, 

is 



16 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

bees, ants, and termites function as a group. The more "primitive" man 
is (in the characteriological not anthropological sense) the more he is 
guided and directed by the herd instinct, which prompts him to seek 
"congenial" company and to obey scrupulously the written or unwritten 
commands of the group. 

The true "herdist" will carefully avoid acting or thinking originally, 
in order not to destroy the uniformity which is so dear to him, and he 
is also ready to rise immediately against anybody who dares to act inde- 
pendently and thus destroy the sacred unity of the uniform group to 
which he belongs. The loyal herdist will not rise alone against the sacri- 
legious offender ; he will have the support of the rest of the circumscribed 
society and thus a mass action of collective protest will take place, forc- 
ing the "lonely individual" to conform or to withdraw. It must be fully 
borne in mind that no one of us is completely free from the influence of 
the herdist instinct and even the noblest among us yield to its dark 
appeal in one form or the other. 

The herdist instinct is furthermore not only personal, in the sense that 
it clamors for a personal collectivism ; it creates also a longing and desire 
for the visual or acoustic contemplation of identitarian or uniformistic 
phenomena. The true herdist, the man truly dominated by that inferior 
instinct, will not only rejoice in marching amongst twenty thousand uni- 
formly clad soldiers, all stepping rhythmically in one direction, but he 
will find an almost equal gratification in contemplating the show from 
a balcony. He will not only be happy in sitting amidst two hundred other 
bespectacled businessmen, drinking beer and humming one chant in 
unison, but the aspect of a skyscraper with a thousand identical windows 
will probably impress him more than a picture by Botticelli or Zurbaran. 

The herdist is the born enemy of all personal hierarchies as well as of 
most hierarchies of value. The modern political philosophies and the 
Industrial Revolution have strengthened the herdist element in all civ- 
ilized countries ; a Parteitag in Nuremberg, the beach of Brighton during 
a bank holiday, a military parade on the Red Square in Moscow or a 
subway train during the rush hours in New York afford voluntary or 
involuntary manifestations of the herdist spirit or the herdist order of 
our days. It is needless to emphasize that the herdist is a convinced 
egalitarian, that he has an inveterate suspicion regarding everything 
original or unique, a hatred for everything beyond his comprehension, a 
hostile uneasiness for things which are "low" or organically natural. The 
peasant with his strong personality is no less a target for his contempt 



IDENTITY VERSUS DIVERSITY 17 

and scorn than the "stuffed shirt," the "high-hatted" aristocrat, or the 
"high-brow" intellectual. 

The ideal dwelling place for the herdist is the city, the megalopolis 
with its apartment houses, clubs, cinemas, theaters, offices, factories, and 
restaurants. Here the herdist has ample opportunity to live the life of 
the masses, to lead an impersonal and lonely existence in a truly de- 
humanized ant heap, to love and like nobody but himself and perhaps 
those similar to him. 

This loneliness, this solitude amongst the many, is usually not even 
mitigated by an awareness of the presence of God. 1 The herdist who 
tends in the political sphere to be a Leftist — i.e., a national or an inter- 
national collectivist — ■ feels little attracted by the idea of God's exist- 
ence who after all is "different" and represents the top of the pyramid 
of a hierarchic system which the herdist, disbelieving in souls, is unable 
to accept. 2 The herdist is truly the homme mediocre whom Ernest Hello 
has described so aptly; 3 he is simply forced to stand for mediocrity be- 
cause it has as the "medium" (the "fifty-fifty"), the best chance to be- 
come the rallying point and the focus for the mass movement, the mass 
sentiment, or the mass norm. 

The antagonist of the herdist, on the other hand, the "romantic" 
man, is not moved by identity and uniformity but by diversity. We must 
be careful not to confound the true "romantic" with the "rugged indi- 
vidualist" who puts up a desperate and losing struggle against an im- 
pending collectivism, or with the mentally unbalanced egotist who is 
extravagant in order to draw general attention. One hardly finds the 
latter type in a rural or "backward" surrounding. Gustave de Nerval 
promenaded his tame lobster in the streets of Paris and not in the loneli- 
ness of the Dauphine. 

Yet there is nothing freakish in a man who longs for people different 
from himself, different in sex, in race, in convictions. The ideal anti- 
herdist longs for God and to be with Him. He may long for countries 
far away, for travel, adventure, and a life full of variety in externals or 
internals. The romantic is not moved by an element of fear as the 
herdist who is hiding his person in an anonymous collective, but he 
seeks the fullness of life with all its diverse aspects. At its loftiest, his 
aspiration is for the fuller life of the spirit. The Germans speak of das 
romantische Lebensgefuhl and one might therefore name the moving 
power in the antiherdist, the romantic spirit, a label which might well 
serve its purpose. 



18 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

But while using this label we have to bear in mind that we do not 
imply a basic affinity between its meaning and the historic literary 
romanticism of Germany at the beginning of the nineteenth century (and 
even far less so of French romanticism of almost the same period). Irving 
Babbitt in his brilliant Rousseau and Romanticism has very aptly char- 
acterized the spirit of the Romantic Movement in Europe and little can be 
added to his genial analysis of this disorganized outbreak of desperate 
vitality between arid classicism and deadly industrialism. The Pseudo- 
Romanticism of our days showed such mad outbursts as weird Califor- 
nian sects, blue fingernails, tree sitting, and "jitterbug" dancing. The 
advent of national socialism and communism was marked by a curious 
and sudden increase of all kinds of extravagant fads even in the religious 
sphere of which the hysteria in connection with Rasputin and the cheese- 
eating Weissenberg sect were the most conspicuous. 

It should not be forgotten that none of us lacks the herd instinct com- 
pletely and that there is scarcely a human being who is totally devoid of 
the romantic spirit. But while the herd instinct of those "who want to 
march through life together, along the collective path, shoulder to 
shoulder, wool rubbing wool and the head down" (Jose Ortega y Gasset) 
— is of the animalistic order, the romantic spirit is purely human, 
divine.* The plenitude of life so eagerly sought by the Romantic, as here 
conceived, is inaccessible to the animal. The terrifying diversity of the 
total cosmos (visible as well as invisible) has no meaning for the termite 
or the herdist with their limited existences in their limited buildings. 

The great achievements — sanctity, heroism, holy wisdom, the beatific 
vision — are not eagerly sought for by the herdist who like the beasts of 
the field longs to be a "secure" animal (to use an expression of Peter 
Wust) instead of being proud to remain an "insecure" animal, which 
man is by nature and in the order of things. Hostile to adventure, which 
after all was one of the great magnetic powers of the Middle Ages, the 
herdist moves cautiously in the broad stream of the mediocre masses 
avoiding all extremes except those in a frenzied mass hysteria. Yet Chris- 
tianity is an extreme. The yoke of Christ is not a lesser menace to his 
meager and miserable personality than the iron postulates of the Cross — 



* Irving Babbitt in his Rousseau and Romanticism speaks ef the high inner qualities 
of imitation. Yet he speaks distinctly of the imitation of "superiors" (the Imitatio 
Christi, for instance) and not of the imitation of "equals," which alone fosters the com- 
ing into existence of the uniform herd. It must again be emphasized that our text 
regards the label "romantic" as devoid of its historical connotations. 



IDENTITY VERSUS DIVERSITY 19 

of the same Cross which is a fiat denial of his shining rule of the "fifty- 
fifty," and disturbing to all his cautious calculations and plannings. Only 
the select can be closely confronted with the Absolute without taking 
flight. Only the saints, but not the "commonsensical" herd, can and will 
surrender to the "Holy Folly of the Cross." For this reason we have such 
hatred on the part of the mediocre man, who hates any sort of hierarchy, 
whether of the saints or of sanctity itself. Sanctity is not only an extraor- 
dinary condition but also an adventure. And adventure belongs to the 
domain of the "Romantic." Adventure is a solitary enterprise, like sanc- 
tity, and therefore not congenial to the herd and the herdist. 4 The herdist 
in turn is bent upon "imitation" (not in the sense of an Imitatio, a fol- 
lowing, but of mere copying), and his imitation is partly the result of his 
lack of originality, his lack of creative power and his inner weakness 
which must be covered up by some sort of protective coloring, a mimicry 
which makes it difficult to distinguish him from the rest and from the 
"norm." 5 

One should, in that connection, certainly not forget the "greatest" 
adventure of the herdist, his banal excursions into the animalistic aspects 
of sex. Here he hopes to drown the despair over his loneliness in the 
herd. The Romantic may be alone, but he is never lonely, and that be- 
cause of his knowledge of the presence of God. (Certainly, also, there is 
more loneliness in an apartment house or in a crammed subway than in a 
village with widely dispersed cottages.) Yet the restriction of adventure 
to the sexual sphere is the reason why our urban culture and civilization 
is so terribly oversexed. The great thirst does not go for "women" or 
"men" but for sex alone, sex for sex' sake. It is not the attraction of the 
other sex, but sex as a drug and escape. It thus stands in the same 
category as the movies. Modern man, having abandoned the super- 
natural, here seeks for perhaps a last consolation, in order not to be 
completely overpowered by machine and monotony. 

It should not be denied that the ugliness and the deadly routine of 
traditionless urban civilizations engendered often a nostalgic thirst in 
man for beauty and romance, and this may be the reason for the 
enormous power of Eros in the technicized world. In the shadow 
of soul-murdering offices and workshops, of desolate railway yards and 
"main streets," without character and expression, love becomes the only 
emotional experience and woman the only living memory of nature and 
a paradise lost. 

Yet natural love between the sexes is not the real fulfillment of emo- 



20 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

tional herdism. Homoeroticism is anything but rare among leading 
Leftists of the nationalistic or the international brand.* It is a well- 
known fact that the latter have openly fought for decades against laws 
prohibiting not only this vice but have defended even more bestial prac- 
tices.** This inclination is frequently promoted (never conditioned) by 
specific cultural ideas and concepts. 6 Identitarian cultures and groups 
favoured the growth of this vice in all ages. 

Sex is, as Dr. Allers emphasizes it, a means of expressing love and not 
an original cause as well as a final end, as Freud seems to imply. Genuine 
love is never love of one's self but love of another "person." The greatest 
love is the love of God and the lasting "marital" love between the sexes 
overbridging the immense psychological abyss between man and woman 
is not unrelated to the love of God; it is basically the love for one of 
His children. The very delight in the otherness of the beloved person is 
a tacit, loving recognition of God's all-embracing greatness. True love 
between man and woman accepts the mysterious variety of God's crea- 
tion whose harmony even original sin did not entirely destroy. 

The intrinsic immorality of perverted love lies in its being fundamen- 
tally egocentric. It is the rejection of the grandeur and the mysterious 
diversity of this God-made world ; it is love of one's own person in the 
same sex and therefore nothing else but sexualized egoism.*** And herein 
lies also the ethical inferiority of herdism. The true herdist (who cer- 
tainly is not always a pervert) is nothing but an egoist who cannot toler- 
ate anybody differing from himself. John Doe, the identitarian, wants 
a nation, a world, a universe peopled by millions of John Does. He can- 
not sympathize nor like anybody at variance with John Doe. No wonder 
that his wishful dream is a humanity of John Does without God or Devil. 
The herdist is by necessity a humanitarian. 

Humanitarianism had always a great difficulty in seeking to stabilize 
its position. The denial of God and soul created an anthropocentrism 



* It is not mere coincidence that the great bard of democratism in its most herdist 
and antipersonalist connotation was an extremely repulsive homosexual — Walt Whitman. 
It is also significant that Thomas Mann in a public speech in the defense of the 
Weimar Republic cited Walt Whitman as supreme witness for the new democratic 
sentiment of comradeship, alluding even to his psychological aberration. Hans Bliiher, 
an outstanding pro-Nazi German writer, on the other hand accused the Jews of treating 
this perversion with ridicule and contempt although "it serves as basis for political co- 
operation." (Cf. his "Die Erhebung Israels gegen die christlichen Giiter," Hamburg, 1931.) 

** This is a logical philosophical development once man has denied the existence of 
a spiritual soul which primarily differentiates man from the brute. 

*** A terrible conglomeration of egoism, self-love, and vanity is apparent in the letters 
of the unfortunate Oscar Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas. 



IDENTITY VERSUS DIVERSITY 21 

which by a trend of its own tended to identify humanity with "nature." 
Humanitarianism, which started with the most sentimental premise (man 
is God), ended therefore finally with the acceptance of the law of the 
jungle. The Leftist mentality of today is hardly characterized by a lov- 
ing mildness. Irving Babbitt in his Rousseau and Romanticism has 
pointed out that the early "romantic" theatrical productions attacked 
primarily the lachrymose glands of the spectators. Profuse weeping and 
crying took place even on the stage itself. What a contradiction to the 
latest phase of humanitarianism and anthropocentrism ! The young 
National Socialist is not less tearless than the young Communist. Ilya 
Ehrenburg wrote a novel called Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears, and 
indeed it does not. And so the old dictum of Grillparzer holds true : 

Der Weg der neuen Bildung geht (The way of the new culture goes 

Von Humanitat From Humanitarianism 

Durch Nationalitdt Through Nationalism 

Zur Bestialitdt.— (1849) To Beastliness.) 

This was probably little understood during the poet's own lifetime, but 
has received a bitter and clear meaning in our days. It has ceased to be 
paradoxical and shows the fatal evolution of godless group feeling and 
deracine collectivism. 

The masses and their leaders who pay such fervent homage to herdist 
ideologies are, as E. v. Kuehnelt-Leddihn emphasized it, of an extreme 
blood-thirstiness and the circenses offered to the antique and modern 
masses were and are spectacularly sanguinary displays. The indignation 
of the American masses in the first six months of World War II about 
the delay of the great carnage was boundless. The lack of terrifying 
headlines cost the Allies many sympathies. (We still remember the out- 
cry about the "phony war.") 

The individual courage of the herdist may be limited, but attacking 
with the herd he can become an easy victim of a true mass psychosis and 
perform "wonders." The Soviet films dealing with revolution and civil 
war have always emphasized the success of mass frenzy. The herdist's 
lack of true humanity even makes him predisposed for sadistic acts such 
as we have witnessed during the Spanish Civil War or in many a con- 
centration camp. 

We must furthermore always bear in mind that equality presupposes 
the perpetual application of force; equality after all is an unnatural 
condition — it is just as unnatural as a completely straight line, a geo- 



22 THE MENACE OF THE HERB 

metrical plain, a perfect circle, distilled water, etc. It needs the inter- 
vention of human agencies who have to curtail and to stem the natural 
growth and development sometimes in the most brutal and cynical way. 7 
Docteur Guillotin, Procrustes, the mythological Hellenic bandit, and the 
magistrate of Strasbourg who decided during the French Revolution to 
demolish the tower of the medieval cathedral because it was higher than 
the surrounding houses, belong all to the same category. 8 Dostoyevski, 
in his Possessed, has predicted accurately how an egalitarian super- 
democracy would function. 9 The Soviets have fulfilled this prophecy to 
the letter. 

At this phase of our analysis it would be advantageous to draw up a 
chart which summarizes the elements and conditions of herdism and 
romanticism. This tabulation does not express the desire to support or to 
confirm any sort of modern environmentalism which tries to use the natu- 
ral influence of environment as basis for a new materialistic determinism. 
This new environmental determinism (as, for instance, preached by John 
Dewey and his behaviorist forerunners) is an even more evil invention 
than Calvin's doctrine concerning predestination. Environment is merely 
a factor, an influence exercised on the human free will, but not a fatal and 
coercive power. 



The Herdist Instinct 
The plain 
The city, the megalopolis 

Equality 

Identity 

Democracy 

Determinism 

Security, safety 

Nationalism, internationalism 

The soldier, militarism 

Industrialism 

Individualism and collectivism 

The apartment house, the hotel 

Anthropocentrism 

Homogeneity of masses 

Monotony 

Centralism 

Horizontal order 

Contractual society 



The Romantic Sentiment 
The mountains 

The village, the chalet, the rural com- 
munity, the peasant house 
Liberty 

Diversity and hierarchy 
Monarchy or aristocracy 
Free will 
Adventure 
Supranationalism 
The knight, the warrior 
Craftsmanship 
Personalism 

The castle, the farm, the hut 
Theocentrism 
Mosaic of families 
Harmony 

Federalism (in the European sense) 
Vertical order 
Service, patriarchal authority 



IDENTITY VERSUS DIVERSITY 23 

The Herdist Instinct The Romantic Sentiment 

Private or state capitalism Anticapitalism 

Anonymity and impersonalism Personal responsibility 

Subjection to the demands of time Timelessness, conservatism 

Worship of the new fashion, worship Worship of the old, of age 

of youth 

Feeling of the finite, fear of death Sense of immortality 

As a result of this last item: 

Exaggerated worship of health Indifference to health 

The "hectic life" The contemplative life 

Doctor worship ("Men in White") Worship of saints 

Speed (Auto as expression of our Slowness, procrastination 

mortality) 

Cowardice Courage 

Cautiousness Carelessness 

Escapism Facing of issues 

Such a list contains naturally many sweeping generalizations and it 
could without doubt be continued ad nauseam. It represents a very super- 
ficial effort to bring the issues into a system and only one of the items 
has been analyzed as to some of its final logical deductions. It is never 
theless obvious that all these separate aspects are closely interrelated, 
interconnected, and interdependent.* True herdism, elevated from the 
status of a low and contemptible instinct to the supreme level of an 
ideology, of a Weltanschauung, has become a tremendous force in our 
modern culture and civilization. The herdist ideologies, based on that 
powerful animal instinct, have attacked and transformed most spheres of 
human activities including love, sex, and politics. The different "demo- 
cratic"** (and superdemocratic totalitarian) parties of the twentieth 
century have continued and fostered this process of dehumanization of 
our Christian culture to a degree hitherto unknown in the annals of 
human existence. 

The confusion about the alleged harmony between modern ochlocracy and 
Catholicism is largely due to a great deal of wishful thinking, misunder- 
stood patriotism, and the ambiguous elasticity of certain technical terms. 
Let us take, for instance, the word equality. How frequently do we hear 
responsible Catholics talking glibly about the equality of human beings ! 
Maritain has warned all about the indiscriminate use of this term and he 



* See Appendix II. 

** The reader is here reminded of our explanation of this term in the explanatory 
note: "What of Democracy." 



24 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

proposed to use the expression Unite du genre humain. 10 Gustave Thibon 
has not only taken egalitarianism severely to task but he has also pointed 
out that the efforts to create equality have engendered at the same time 
the most violent inequalities. All those who by their free will or their 
disposition are unable to conform to the prescribed standards of equality 

— and there will always be such a minority — will after the efforts of 
leveling stand out more distinctly than in a nonuniform society. 11 These 
are then usually the "traitors" who do not "play the game" and must 
be executed, exiled, or weeded out like the aristos under Robespierre, the 
burzhuys under Lenin, or the Jews under Adolf Hitler. 

It must furthermore be borne in mind that equality stands for 
monotony and not for harmony. A harmonious melody can only be estab- 
lished by different unidentical musical tones. These tones must be as- 
sembled and have to follow in a certain sequence; otherwise they will 
result in chaos and not in melody. 12 Human society presupposes such an 
inequality and unity. Thibon has seen very clearly this issue which can 
only be solved in the sign of love. 

"It consists in purifying and organizing the inequalities from the point 
of view of a deeper equality, or, to put it more precisely, in making in- 
equality serve unity. But this unity, what else is it but love and what is 
love without God." 13 

This clarification is quite necessary because many a good Christian — 
and that holds true for most of those living in the Western Hemisphere 

— has an unclear notion about human equality. 14 The American Declara- 
tion of Independence mentions the fact that the human beings are 
"created equal."* This is true in the theological sense, and in the 
theological sense only. Two newly born babes are equal before God 
whether their parents are white or colored, American or foreign, registered 
in the Virginia Blue Book or in the rogues gallery. This theological 
equality continues until the time comes when they commit morally 
responsible acts. Judas Iscariot and St. John the Evangelist were equally 
conceived in original sin and free from personal sin, but how different 
their end ! Heaven and hell are not identical. It is actually the privilege 
of our environmental determinists to discard the terms "saint" and 
"sinner" and to supplant them by pragmatic expressions like "social- 



* See Irving Brant's James Madison (New York, 1941) on the different efforts to 
clarify Jefferson's formulation in the Constitution of Virginia. George Mason, for in- 
stance, proposed "... that all men are created equally free and independent," which 
gives to this proclamation a Hbertinarian, and more manifestly nonegalitarian sense. 



IDENTITY VERSUS DIVERSITY 25 

unsocial" or "adapted-unadapted." Dostoyevski prophesied this moral 
relativism in his chapter on the Grand Inquisitor {Brothers Karamazov), 
where he sees humanity declaring through the mouth of its science that 
there are no trespasses and no sinners but only "hungry people." 

From a purely human and material point of view we are utterly 
unequal — unequal in the eyes of our fellow men (which matters less) 
but also unequal from an absolute material standard. From that point of 
view we are not even born equal ; the syphilitic babe and the healthy 
newcomer in this world are different in material quality. The stupid and 
the intelligent man or woman, the physically strong and the physically 
weak, the learned and the unlearned — they are all humanly unequal 
from the aspects compared. And of course there is also a hierarchy of 
characteristics. The Theist will give precedence to spiritual qualities over 
intellectual qualities, and most people will value intellect higher than 
mere bodily strength. 

Apparently a great deal of misinterpretation is floating about concern- 
ing the interpretation of the American Declaration of Independence. The 
signers would certainly have been the worst hypocrites had they given 
to their document the same interpretation that so many give to it today. 15 
We can understand their attitude only if we remember the fact that the 
basis of the American Republic is an aristocratic whiggish one, which 
largely lacked that deeper "democratic" element in social relations as 
we find it in southern and eastern Europe, and perhaps in South America. 

The word "democratic," in connection with the Catholic (or schismatic) 
world, is, as we have pointed out at the beginning, not a happy one. 
In these countries, whether they have a highly hierarchic social structure 
or not, we find a certain "demophil" sentiment. De Tocqueville remarks 
in his De la DSmocratie en Amirique that Americans are often astonished 
and even shocked about the familiarity between masters and servants in 
France. The insolence of Sancho Pansa also fits perfectly into this picture. 
Such Catholic pseudo-egalitarian sentiment can obviously not spring 
from the acceptance of a human equality, which does not exist, but 
from the aforementioned fact that the most important human value — 
the degree of sinfulness or sanctity — is hidden to our eye and only 
revealed in its completeness to God. The nonchalantly polite but never- 
theless free interclass manners in the Catholic world are the natural 
consequence of a conventional (nonideological) egalitarianism, based on 
the profound knowledge that our final status — on the other side of 
the grave — will be basically different from our present one. Further- 



26 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

more, because of the human fact that we are all images of God and 
potential saints (not excluding sinners like the young Augustine or Maria 
Magdalena), it follows that Catholics, grown up in a Catholic culture, 
pay reverence to everybody regardless of his color, class, and publicly 
manifested morality. The attacks against human dignity on the other 
hand are attacks against God's dignity. There is only a pragmatic but 
not a basic difference between a Nazi and a Bolshevist concentration 
camp on one side, and the looting and desecration of a Church in 
Catalonia on the other, 

"He who has never looked through man's outward condition to the 
naked soul," says Channing, "and there seen God's image commanding 
reverence is a stranger to the distinctive love of Christianity." 

The great struggle of our time is the twofold assault to which 
Christian doctrine is exposed from both groups of identitarian herdists. 
There are first of all the universal herdists clamoring for the absolute 
equality of all human beings, provided they accept "proletarian" stand- 
ards of wealth, behavior, and morals, which Communists insist upon. 
This involves logically the denial of the existence of morals and the 
acceptance of a determinism* as preached by Teachers College, Columbia, 
and now gradually conquering the youth of the United States. 

Needless to say that every successful attack against the concept of 
free will results in an almost total degradation of human dignity.' It puts 
us beyond good and evil and fosters a fantastic quietism or an even more 
fantastic irresponsibility. It is nevertheless amusing to see determinists of 
all heretical denominations — Calvinists, Marxists, Behaviorists — flock- 
ing to clubs and leagues defending civil liberties. Liberties to be enjoyed 
without free will ! One sees how far the prostitution of logic has led many 
of us. This great confusion is also apparent in the standing phrase that 
"democracy stands for equality before the law," whereas the law is 
largely interested in iniquities and inequalities. 16 There is, of course, 
one great excuse for these confused minds and that is that they all have 
continued in the bottom of their hearts to believe in free will. Deter- 
minism is too inhuman and suicidal to be generally and sincerely accepted 
and the charge which remains is largely that of hypocrisy. 17 



* Herein lies the great dilemma for the Communist Party. A revolutionary movement 
accepting determinism and denying free will cannot expect much revolutionary tlan 
and little responsibility in action. The anarchists who had never accepted the Marxian 
fatalism of "inevitable developments" developed a greater dynamism and believed in 
the "propaganda of the deed." They were a more sanguinary but less sordid class than 
their Marxian fellow revolutionaries. 



IDENTITY VERSUS DIVERSITY 27 

The second attack against integral Christendom, gaining momentum 
right now, comes from the nonuniversal herdists. They put the human 
beings into watertight hierarchic categories frequently of a racial nature. 
This new racial determinism, creating racial aristocracies, responsible to a 
collective "race" but not to a personal God, and racial proletariats with 
no hope of an earthly salvation, is not less a danger than the classic 
panherdism. The desire for racial purity in order to achieve the perfectly 
uniform herd leads to brutal persecution and finally to the strictest 
imaginable uniformism. The Germanies without the Jews will be an 
even more monotonous place than the Germanies with persecuted Jews. 
We will experience in Central Europe the integral boredom which 
Myerezhkovski considers to be the fatal characteristic of the Realm of 
the Antichrist. 18 

If we look at the historical record of herdist ideologies in relation to 
the largest Christian Church then we see a great amount of mutual 
suspicion, strife, and condemnation. European ochlocracy in the political 
and cultural sense of the nineteenth century (i.e., "liberal democracy") 
took root in a rather dechristianized society where the Church was 
purely on the defensive (1789-1919). We have on the other hand no right 
to doubt the sincerity of many Catholics — European or American — 
in their positive acceptance not only of political ochlocracy but even 
of some of the more elusive tenets related to its underlying philosophy 
of a herdist pattern. 

We should always bear in mind that the Church and ochlocracy co- 
operated badly in Europe, that the forces inimical to the Church always 
fostered ochlocratic tendencies. One cannot dismiss the latter fact as purely 
accidental. Of course there is no incompatibility on dogmatic grounds. 
The question moves on a plain where in dubiis libertas is written in 
flaming letters: "In doubtful matters, liberty." Yet the atmosphere, 
the parfum of the Church and that of "democracy," when blended in 
the political and cultural sphere, emits a bad stench. A parallel reading 
of the works of our authoritative "democratic" essayists, poets, and other 
creative writers (from the Leaves of Grass to the City of Man) with 
the encyclicals of Gregory XVI and Pius IX would give a mortal shock 
to many "progressive" Catholics who think that the Church ought to 
come to terms with the spirit of our time . . . 19 (which may, overnight, be- 
come the spirit of yesterday). These encyclicals at least express the spirit 
and policy of the Church in unmistakable directness and clearness. 



28 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

Efforts have never been wanting to bring Catholicism and ochlocracy 
under the same denominator, and these efforts can easily be traced back 
to two specific sources: (1) wishful thinking influenced by the desire 
to meet certain situations, and (2) wishful thinking due to environmental 
and personal circumstances. 

In the first category we find a few theorists who saw (rightly) a danger 
in the autocratic aspirations of monarchs of the type of James I, rulers 
who displayed caesaropapistic tendencies (the "Divine Rights of Kings"), 
tendencies which unfortunately were not entirely confined to Protestant 
rulers although the latter fell an easier prey to such temptations. In 
order to counteract these aspirations. St. Robert Bellarmine and other 
of his fellow Jesuits proposed a mixed form of government in which 
aristocratic and democratic elements were called to check a proclivity 
which Protestantism so eagerly pretended to oppose — idol worship, this 
time in the form of the worship of a single human being. 

In the second category we find Catholic thinkers and political theorists 
who grew up in a non-Catholic cultural atmosphere pregnant with 
ochlocratic ideas; these were usually guided by the desire to find a 
justification for the political ideas of their surroundings and to provide 
ochlocracy and democratism* with a background of Catholic thought. 
The representatives of this category are often brilliant Catholic philos- 
ophers, theologians, or controversialists, but they frequently lack the 
understanding for Catholic mentality and Catholic tradition. They are 
sometimes Jewish or Protestant converts or (as in most cases) members 
of the Catholic dispersion. 

Their task does not lack a certain irony. A non-Catholic civilization 
provided them with a finished product in a political atmosphere tense 
with ochlocratic propaganda and powerful ochlocratic elements in their 
culture. As a result they feel they have to write an a posteriori defense 
of something which they have hardly helped to bring into existence. They 
are engaged in an effort to baptize with greater or less success a form 
of government and civilization which their spiritual forefathers looked 
upon with hatred and suspicion. Frequently in their enthusiasm they 
impute to ochlocracy intentions and characteristics which are alien to 
its actual form and tradition. 

Naturally they are intelligent enough to be aware of the fact that 
the justifications for the "democratic" order given by their countrymen 



* I.e., the philosophy of the "democratic way of life." 



IDENTITY VERSUS DIVERSITY 29 

or even coreligionists are not "watertight" from a Catholic point of view, 
and that the Rousseauan influence on the usual concept of "democracy" 
is extremely strong. They construe therefore very cleverly, and with 
good logical arguments, a case for a non-Rousseauan democracy which 
is at one and the same time a theorem and a "program." Dr. Mortimer 
Adler is a radical example of this school of thought, radical because he 
goes to the extreme of calling democracy the "only good and morally 
justifiable form of government." But here we are more interested with 
the less radical group which sees in ochlocracy ("democracy") one of the 
good forms of government or perhaps the best of the good forms of 
government which as we know was never advocated by the Founding 
Fathers and has even less chance to succeed the present constitution, the 
representative republic. 

Yet their programmatic "democracy," purified from the pagan concep- 
tions of Rousseau, has little hope for success in the Catholic world because 
the average (and sometimes even the outstanding) Catholic hardly takes 
himself as seriously, from a secular point of view, as does the Protestant 
or atheist. Our great Catholic democratists, who are such excellent 
logicians, lack frequently the insight into the Catholic mentality of the 
rank and file in Catholic countries. The "typical" Catholic of the 
Mundus Catholicus is certainly not a communitarian. While not hostile 
to a personal attachment, he resents excessive legal ties at the same 
time. Neither is he free of a healthy cynicism and worldly pessimism, 
which traits are rare in the (more naive) Protestant. If medieval man 
would have been told that he could "appoint" his kings or superiors, 
he might have become quite interested in the proposition. Yet on 
discovering that his vote was scheduled to be drowned in an ocean of 
millions of other votes his reaction would have been that of a man 
whose leg had been pulled successfully.* 

The Catholic of the Catholic tradition is (without being necessarily an 
egoist) a man whose outlook starts with the "I" and not the "We." 
Every political or cultural ochlocracy is based on the "We," which 
makes it so unacceptable to men deeply personalistic and alien to the 
Protestant concepts of "individualism" or the eastern enthusiasm for 
collectivism. While all modern non-Catholics (in culture) begin their 



* This lack of political interest is a problem in every representative government in 
large countries where the principle of "one man — one vote" has been introduced. About 
one fourth of all Americans do not go regularly to the polls. Educational, not property 
qualifications for the franchise, would be less democratic, but politically justified. Also 
qualifications of civic (and military) merits should be considered. 



30 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

philosophies with the preamble that men (or specific groups of men) 
are more "like" than "different,"* the reaction of the average Catholic 
(in the Catholic world) would be utter astonishment if not disapproval. 
If there were nothing else than the final and inevitable development 
of political ochlocracy into the modern party dictatorships 20 it ought to 
be enough to make the Catholics more skeptical toward this governmental 
tendency and its ultimate consequences. (We refer here also to the 
demand of "more democracy!") It is not a good counterargument to 
state that everything is evil in a state of exaggeration. Herdism is 
essentially a "low" sentiment. As nucleus and carrying power of a 
philosophy of earthly existence it becomes definitely an evil. A real 
good on the other hand can never be exaggerated enough. There can 
never be, in human society, enough of the acceptance of the Cross and 
of charity, never enough loving differentiation and hierarchy, never 
enough of the spirit of Maundy Thursday when our Lord, the pope, 
the emperors, kings, and bishops knelt down to wash the feet of twelve 
Apostles or of twelve beggars. Nor is the custom discontinued in our day. 
This is hierarchy and charity, order and love. 



* This question can be argued either way ; we are here only interested in the psycho- 
logical reaction caused by this statement. 



II 

OCHLOCRACY AND DEMOCRATISM 

"Dix millions d' ignorances ne font pas un savoir." 

"Democracy" in ancient Greece, and especially in Athens, could almost 
be compared to an exclusive club of gentlemen who were distinct from 
slaves, resident aliens and other "inferior" individuals. There was a 
similar conception of democracy widely spread in the South of the 
United States. The Hansa towns and the Italian maritime republics 
were also strongly aristocratic. The only true "democracy" at the end 
of the Middle Ages in Europe was Switzerland, or to be more precise, 
the Alpine parts of Switzerland. The population of the original Eid- 
genossenschaft was almost entirely of peasant stock and lacked practi- 
cally any social distinctions, yet the situation in Bern, Geneva, Fribourg, 
and Basle was quite different. At the time of the battle of Sempach 
there was no pretender for a nonexistent Swiss throne, and the public 
affairs of the Original Cantons were so simple that no officialdom of 
a bureaucratic pattern was necessary to cope with them; the result 
was the growth of a democratic republic. Some of the more ancient 
cantons have still preserved their original, direct democracy where the 
citizens appear in person at the diet to determine the state of affairs 
of their small political unit. The small size of these diets was not in- 
strumental in favoring the rise of ochlocratic mass movements or a de- 
personalized ochlocratic mass culture. 

Yet the great impulse for our modern ochlocracy and democratism 
comes from France. The French Revolutionaries have tried to copy 
antique forerunners, but they were not very lucky in their efforts. 21 

31 



32 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

There is a certain Swiss influence connected with this revolution, yet 
this element has nothing to do with the democratic peasant spirit of the 
Original Cantons. It emanates from the eighteenth-century enlighten- 
ment which has a strong Swiss, or rather Genevan background. This 
French town, acquired by the Swiss at a later period of their existence, 
had already produced its famous two Johns: Jehan Cauvin (from Noyon) 
and Jean Jacques Rousseau. M. Dunan's humanitarian Red Cross, the 
assassination of Empress Elizabeth, the League of Nations, and the 
socialism of M. Nicole were scheduled to follow. 

Whatever the conceptions of Enlightenment toward God might have 
been, whether they pictured Him as nonexistent, or as a pale being 
without personality, sunk in sleep, or at least disinterested toward the 
fate of the individual, that period took a negative attitude toward the 
next world. Enlightenment was antimetaphysical and geocentrical. In 
the framework of such a philosophy, devoid of otherworldliness, the 
human beings and their existence assumed automatically a different 
significance. The meaning of life, human happiness, and all the other 
basic values were projected into this world and that change brought an 
enormous thirst for "justice," earthly justice, of course, which in turn 
was nothing else but an initially veiled and finally open demand for 
absolute equality. 

This pagan geocentrism has changed the very content of our culture. 
The "happy end" of the cheap, popular novels and the films is nothing 
but the outcome of the supposition that the human drama finds its 
ultimate conclusion here on earth. The Calvinists in their materialism 
took a similar attitude. 22 The more subtle Atheist, of greater experience, 
has contempt for the "happy end" and substitutes for it a stubborn 
heroical pessimism which comes pretty near to integral despair. The 
modern Catholic French writers like Mauriac and Bernanos avoid the 
happy end in relation to this life. Paul Claudel, in L'Otage, expresses 
his disbelief in earthly justice by punishing the people of good will and 
rewarding the villains in the last scene of this play. For the Christian 
the earth is essentially a "vale of tears." 

It has frequently been emphasized that the French Revolution aided 
at least the cause of reason and reasoning. One remembers the worship 
of reason on the Champs de Mars; yet it was a very one-sided form 
of reasoning which made such headway during the French Revolution, 
a reasoning without that deeper understanding which Peter Wust calls 



OCHLOCRACY AND DEMOCRATISM 33 

Vernunft in juxtaposition to Verstand. It was a distorted and rather 
Cartesian Verstand which became the measure of all things, and thus 
made possible the smooth evolution from theocentrism, over anthropo- 
centrism, to geocentrism. Due to the elimination of the firm belief in 
another world the point of gravity was shifted to our earthly existence, 
and the happenings and events of this life became automatically 
"weighty," final, irrevocable, unbearable. Humor died a lingering death. 
The transcendental levity of Christian culture was gone; there was no 
final consolation, no otherworldly relativity but only gray, inescapable 
fate. A hunchback was now all through his existence a hunchback, 
a man born blind all through his existence a blind man, a proletarian 
all through his existence a stepchild of life, whereas in the framework 
of Christian belief these shortcomings would last only for the earthly 
decades of a person's existence, i.e., until his death. Things would 
change radically afterward. But with this truth lost to sight, life became 
a terrible load. 

It is important to remember that Christianity had not abolished 
slavery. Neither had the Church ever praised this institution, like 
Calhoun, because the whole relationship of master to slave was not 
important enough in the light of a life eternal to be combated with 
furious indignation apart from the fact that even a slave had every 
protection in a truly Christian society. 23 But now the servant was an 
"eternal" servant, the master an "eternal" master, and the rich man 
possibly all through his assumed existence a rich man ; thus the hatred 
of the lower classes now became wide awake. The employees had during 
the Middle Ages a knowing smile for those in the higher stations of life ; 
they knew it could easily happen that a rich prince might suffer agonies 
in hell while a leprous beggar sat in the immediate nearness of 
God's throne. 

This is also the reason why such great stress was laid on the 
"democratic" aspects of death during the Middle Ages. It can still be 
witnessed in many a mystery play, especially in Everyman. The Toten- 
tanz, "Death Dance," was a very popular motif in song as well as 
in art. The most famous of all these representations is probably Albrecht 
Diirer's conception depicting death carrying away beggar, merchant, 
burgher, emperor and pope. One would really love to see in our 
democratic age the result of a Russian etcher's artistic activity represent- 
ing Stalin as fetched away by death, or the moral indignation of the 
progressive mob should somebody portray the President of the United 



34 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

States in similar circumstances.* Neither can one imagine Adolf Hitler 
washing the feet of twelve poor inmates of the Sachsenhausen con- 
centration camp. The reason for this change is that we are living in 
an age of "equality" and it is only surprising that our common descent 
from an assumed powerful King-Kong, instead of God, has not rendered 
us more charitable to each other. 

This change from the fatherhood of God to the fatherhood of the 
pithecanthropus erectus, Dubois' "Walking Ape-Man," has destroyed 
a good deal of genuine human pride. Once everybody was proud of his 
own class or station in life. But now there is everywhere an unquench- 
able thirst for identity and equality. Nobody wants to serve, nobody 
wants to be subjected because service in a nonhierarchical society means 
going under the level of equality. 

That state of affairs is also largely the reason why there is such a 
dearth of servants in England, Holland, and in America under normal 
conditions, and also why we find, for instance, in the United States, the 
desperate dread of cleaning shoes or boots on the part of servants. In 
spite of the large amount of unemployment in the United Kingdom after 
the World War I, we saw there the number of foreign maids and 
cooks swelling up to 15,000 in 1937. The efforts to get volunteers for 
the armed forces in England was, prior to Munich, a similar failure. 
Yet it was interesting to observe that the percentage of Catholics in the 
British army was 14 per cent in spite of the fact that the national average 
was only 6 per cent. They evidently shared less in that terrible neurosis 
of prestige which made itself felt all over Europe. 

Yet the genuine pride which people used to feel for their station in 
life, vanished : the aristocratic pride, the craftsman's pride, the burgher's 
pride and honor. Everybody wanted to get quickly to the top of the 
ochlocratic sand heap of equal gains. The feeling of inequality begins 
now to be a burning pain, snobism lifts its ugly head, the element of 
general human competition gains headway in every phase of life. 

People used to arrange their lives after the precepts of God; they 
felt that they were continuously observed by God and they were eager 
(in varying degrees) to please God; but now they compare themselves 
with their neighbors and their ambition becomes limitless. Dr. Leverett 
S. Lyon, vice-president of the Brookings Institution, thinks that the 
tendency to "keep up with the Joneses" is one of the strongest driving 



* In our pagan civilization it is "indelicate" to speak of the death of a person, 
death being for the atheist an irreparable catastrophe. 



OCHLOCRACY AND DEMOCRATISM 35 

powers in American criminality. Yet even the nobility acquires in this 
new framework a new value and a new magnetism, and in an age of 
Social Registers it is difficult to understand how it was possible that the 
great merchants of Moscow considered it a shame when their daughters 
married mere princes. The class pride of the middle and lower classes 
not seldom underwent, in the "democratic" period of our history, a change 
into methodical snobism. The waning of class distinctions engendered a 
general "race" toward the higher strata which brought triumph to 
a few and grief to many.* 

There is little doubt that atheism, agnosticism, and the denial of the 
other world are partially responsible for the rapid technical development 
which gave us, apart from exquisite instruments for mass destruction, 
various means to bridge time and space. We had the heading, "Speed," 
in our chart of the herdist instinct and the romantic sentiment. Ortega y 
Gasset, in his Rebelidn de las tnasas, points out very adroitly the fact 
that the automobile is the very expression of our present acute feeling 
of mortality. Endless progress in madly increased comforts and in 
technical developments is the goal of the age. On this basis, if we were 
bodily immortal we would feel no such need for technical gadgets saving 
time by conquering space. 

Yet the conquest of time and space is only partially a final aim and 
ultimate goal of a herdist society. Every ideology visualizes a certain 
end and ochlocracy is no exception of the rule ; the end is not as clearly 
formulated as in communism and one can say that it has been agreed 
upon by some sort of general consent. But even in spite of the fact that 
this ultimate aim is not of such a teleological nature as that of the 
proletarian Millennium of Karl Marx,** it is nonetheless chiliastic ; the 
democratic middle class of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries always 
believed in some sort of "endless progress." 24 "Progress" is for the 
convinced ochlocrats a consoling Utopia of madly increased comfort and 
technicism. 2 '" This charming but dull vision was always the pseudo- 
religious consolation of millions of ecstatic believers in ochlocracy and 
in the relative perfection and wisdom of Mr. and Mrs. Averageman. 



* "Democratic societies respect nothing more than nobility of birth." — Anatole France, 
Penguin Island, I. 

** Read the excellent analysis of E. W. F. Tomlinson in Vol. LXVI of the Criterion. 
This is one of the best exposures of the inner contradiction of Marxian dialectics in rela- 
tion to the final Marxian goal. 



36 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

Utopias in general are surrogates jor heaven; they give a meager solace 
to the individual that his sufferings and endeavors may enable future 
generations to enter the chiliastic paradise. Communism works in a 
similar way. Its millennium is almost the same as that of ochlocracy. The 
Millennium of Lenin, the Millennium of Bellamy, the Millennium as 
represented in H. G. Wells's, "Of Things to Come," the Millennium of 
Adolf Hitler and Henry Ford — they are all basically the same; they 
often differ in their means to attain it but they all agree in the point of 
technical perfection and the classless or at least totally homogeneous 
society without grudge or envy. This identity of ideological outlooks 
explains the mutual admiration of certain diracini Americans and Soviet- 
Russians for their respective fatherlands* 

There is little doubt that this millennium is one of civilization and not 
of culture because it is a millennium of comfort, free from effort 
and pain.** 

These expressions — "culture" and "civilization" — have to be used 
in their Continental sense to make the point clear. "Culture" is the sum 
of all products which represent a personal manifestation, like painting, 
poetry, religion, philosophy, and the humanities. "Civilization" is non- 
personal. It is the sum total of all efforts which contribute to the increase 
of comfort or "usefulness" in the practical sense. Bathtubs, dentists' tools, 
railways, and traffic regulations are products of civilization. These easily 
transcend national and racial borders. It would be difficult, no doubt, to 
assign here the proper place for such phenomena as manners or laws. 
They are on the border line of culture and civilization because they are 
partly manifestations and personal expressions of specific national groups 
in specific ages and partly lubricants of social life or guarantees of 
peaceful social coexistence. A document like the Sachsenspiegel is more 
or less a true mirror of medieval German culture, while the Swiss laws 
transplanted to Turkey by Ataturk have to be rated as efforts of 
civilization. 

Yet while civilization is basically lack of friction, smoothness, comfort, 



* An early number of Colosseum had a cover printed all over with the words : 
"Utopias are opium for the people. Utopias are opium for the people. Utopias are 
opium for the people. . . ." 

** There seems to be, though, a conflict between the never completely extinguished 
thirst for adventure and the coming millennium of miraculous inventions (and comfort) ; 
one has only to study the comics displaying pictures of semiarmored Martians and 
half-naked inhabitants of Venus shooting each other with magic rays, to see the pro- 
jection of a cocktail of death and refrigerators into a half apocalyptic, half-millenarian 
future. 



OCHLOCRACY AND DEMOCRATISM 37 

and material enjoyment we have to look at traditional Christianity — 
with its violent opposition to euthanasia, abortion, contraception, pacifism, 
and individualism — as being something "uncomfortable." Christianity 
is after all the only great religion which does not content itself with 
preaching indifference toward suffering, like the Stoa or Buddhism, but 
actually sees in suffering, sustained in the right spirit, a positive value. 
And just because Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular, 
are neither keen on mere "beauty" or "comfort" but stand for magnifi- 
cence {Grandeur, Grossartigkeit) they reject naked aestheticism or civil- 
ization if not in the letter at least in the spirit. 26 It is difficult to project 
into the frame of a comfortistic civilization* the picture of Christ, 
hanging on the cross with a body convulsed by pain, the palms torn to 
shreds by the heavy nails, the hairs glued to the scalp by sweat and 
coagulated blood. It ought to be repeated again that culture is always 
"magnificent." Pure, uprooted I'art pour I'art civilization, on the other 
side, is always practical and utilitarian and thus is bound to enter into 
conflict with integral Christianity and every true culture, because neither 
culture nor the Church are ever "practical" ; they are — in a bourgeois, 
not a cosmic sense — highly unpractical. No wonder therefore that 
integral Christianity is more at home in those parts of the world where 
culture is predominant and civilization at a low ebb. Southern India is 
thus a more favorable soil for the Church than Pittsburgh or Detroit. 
Civilization is geocentric comfort. But culture, which must be bought 
by bitter suffering (there is neither art nor sanctity without suffering), 
points always toward heaven. And the ochlocratic millennium hell bent 
upon avoiding suffering will turn its back toward heaven. 

These questions had to be cleared up first before the political aspects 
of ochlocracy could be analyzed. The ochlocratic movements do not 
thrive on air, they need a specific soil, a specific culture and civilization 
with the preponderance of the latter. Some readers may still consider 
it unreasonable to see ochlocracy accused in the preceding as well as 
in the following pages for numerous shortcomings in modern culture and 
civilization. Yet it cannot be emphasized with sufficient candor that there 
is a deep inner connection between all manifestations of cultural existence, 



* There is an excellent attack on "Comfortism" in Werner Sombart's Der deutsche 
Sozialismus (1934). An English translation of this valuable book has been published 
under the title A New Social Philosophy, by the Princeton University Press (Trans. 
Carl S. Geiser). 



38 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

and that it is indeed difficult to place the individual cultural phenomena 
in any graded sequence as to their temporal precedence, causality, 
primariness, etc. The complexity of culture, thought, tradition is such 
that we frequently face a maze of manifestations which influence each 
other mutually and thus engender new variations. It is all very nice 
to draw up a long pedigree of national socialism, starting with Descartes 
and then leading, through Kant and Hegel, on to the incestuous liaison 
of Marx and Treitschke. There are hundreds of other factors which made 
the thoughts and ideas of these thinkers acceptable and brought them 
to maladive virulence. And these men in turn were influenced by the 
things they saw and heard, by architectural styles, living conditions, 
conversations, etc. The ochlocratic tendencies influenced modern times, 
and the modern spirit modeled and remodeled democratism. It is a 
process of mutuality. 

The main argument of this book could have been built up either 
by leaving the political aspects of our culture for the end, or else by 
placing them at the very beginning. Yet the reason why the political 
argumentation, centered in the ochlocratic ideologies (we have to speak 
in the plural), takes so much space is simply due to the fact that 
political ideologies lend themselves better to argumentation and discussion 
than art, literature, externals of worship, cuisine, architecture, or sartorial 
fashions. In the latter, the principle of de gustibus non est disputandum, 
coupled with the inevitability of great variations in individual interpreta- 
tion, makes a fruitful discussion difficult if not impossible. 

One must remember, on the other hand, that the tendency toward 
homogeneity and totality, apparent in every culture, does not permit 
the substitution of individual values without far-reaching consequences. 
To all practical purposes these two trends are not interchangeable with- 
out intimately affecting the whole or being mutually destroyed. If, for 
instance, in a thoroughly "democratized" state (one that is ochlocratic in 
politics and democratistic in purely cultural matters) family life, male 
superiority, and the prerogatives of the paterfamilias would suddenly in- 
crease out of proportion thanks to some magic interference, this change 
would inevitably affect not only the social structure of the country but 
even its political form. (The rule of two parents over four children is 
clearly "undemocratic") 

It is difficult to fear death if one is very pious. It is difficult not to 
worship health if one fears death. It is difficult to enforce general health 
without large-scale state intervention and it is equally difficult to imagine 



OCHLOCRACY AND DEMOCRATISM 39 

increased state intervention without a loss of liberties. This totality of 
human culture, society, politics and religion, was always well understood 
by the Church which always disagreed with the Marxian, neo-Protestant 
and demoliberal view that "Religion is a private matter."* Such an 
atomistic view blurs every comprehensive vista. None of our actions, 
thoughts, or products leads an existence in vacuo. 

And now, after a cursory discussion of the claims and the position of 
political ochlocracy, a return to the analysis of the general aspects will 
make it possible to amplify our statements. 

We all agree that people who form a political unit have a right to 
determine their collective fate. But before one continues to reason along 
these lines it will be necessary to define the very nature of a "political 
people," or a "nation." It would be a great mistake to consider a nation, 
or for that matter every organic community, as a mere arithmetic sum 
of so-and-so-many noses. Every organism has a hierarchy of its parts. 
To overlook this fact is a perversion which usually results in a terrific 
loss of energies, such as might lead to national death and political disaster. 

The brain, for instance, is a more important part of the body than 
the muscles of the arm, and the heart has functions which the liver 
could never arrogate for itself. The loss of a limb may be quantitatively 
larger than that of the lungs, yet no being is able to survive the destruc- 
tion of that valuable inner organ. One can argue that an animal would 
die in the long run if it would lose all its extremities because it would 
be unable to find or catch its food, yet there is definitely a hierarchy 
of the parts of the organism, and while certain aspects of this hierarchy 
may be subject to debate it is self-evident that these parts have functions 
which can rarely be interchanged. One cannot hear with the eyeballs or 
digest with the kidneys ; one might walk on one's hands but this is an 
art which many may admire but only few will accomplish. There is 
hierarchy as well as function in every organism. One man may be more 
important than another just as the eye is more important than the finger. 
Yet we may not forget in this connection that this discussion is clearly 
not moving on a theological plane. It would be sinful to destroy willfully 
an eye as it is sinful to cut off a finger, and so, too, it is sinful to murder 
a gravedigger, an idiot, or a babe, even as it is sinful to assassinate a king 
or a president. 

If one denies the organic character of the political nations and consid- 



* This does not imply that it is therefore subject to state interference. 



40 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

ers them as sand heaps, it would be difficult to continue this argument. 
It should not be denied that there are great differences between a national 
and an animal organism ; a national organism is far more flexible and its 
parts are able to change their functions and their hierarchical values. 
The person-within-the-nation (the individual citizen) is able to combine 
several functions of different importance, to lose or to acquire new 
skills, to take over new and to abandon old tasks. Conservatives must 
always bear in mind that political nations are made up of persons; of 
beings who are per se, i.e., exist by themselves. The cells and parts of the 
animal or of the human body are not per se operans or per se existens. 
And yet it is a well-known fact that the more primitive the political 
nation (the tribe, the society) or the animal body the less apparent will 
be this functional and hierarchical difference of the parts. 

Specialization is a characteristic of development and specialization is 
nothing else but another aspect of functionalism. There is naturally a far 
greater functional diversity in the human body than in the physical 
structure of an amoeba ; there is equally more specialization and diverted 
function in Chinese or European society than among the Patagonians or 
the Central African Pygmees. This in spite of the fact that even primi- 
tive societies have a rough outline of function and hierarchy, because 
they are, more or less, built upon the principle of the family which is 
functional as well as hierarchical. De la Tour du Pin has pointed out 
very rightly that democratism (and democracy) is only feasible in either 
very primitive societies (with a minimum of stratification) or in old and 
decaying societies who like old people are again reverting to the forms 
of childhood. The United States obviously belongs to neither of these 
groups.* 

The functions of individual parts have importance for the whole and 
teleologically their functions may be "equal," but to all practical pur- 
poses their hierarchy is evident. A chimney sweep is a valuable as well as 
necessary member of society, but his function in earthly relation is to 
sweep chimneys, to beget children, to pay taxes, to lead with charity and 
authority his family as well as his apprentices, and to raise his voice in 
these few public matters which by his education, knowledge, and wisdom 
he is able to judge. His function is not to operate upon cancer patients, 
to drive locomotives, or to direct the foreign policy of the country. All 



*That the United States is not an ochlocracy, i.e., consists neither of savages nor of 
degenerate Sybarites the reader will readily agree. Our genuine Ochlocrats (most of 
them Leftists) would like to combine savagery with decadence. 



OCHLOCRACY AND DEMOCRATISM 41 

these functional divisions are matters of reason and prudence. If we 
need new clothes we will go to a tailor, if we have a bodily ailment we 
will call upon a doctor, if the country needs a military or a budgetary 
reform it is reasonable and prudent to enlist the aid of a military or 
financial expert for this purpose ; it would certainly be sheer nonsense to 
ask a tailor or a doctor to remedy such situations. 

Yet ochlocrats who never tired of accusing conservatives and Catholics 
of superstition, illogical traditionalism, and "unscientific" procedure 
make an act of faith in the inner illumination of the individual and the 
infallibility of numerical majorities. Phrases like "forty million French- 
men can't be wrong" display, nevertheless, a gross misunderstanding of 
logic ; never in history has there been a more farcical and insipid amal- 
gamation of Lutheran and Rousseauan confusion than in the interpreta- 
tions underlying elections and the general franchise. 27 Luther already was 
certain that everybody ought to be his own Pope by making use of his 
own wits in a private interpretation of the bible after dispensing with 
expert theological judgment ; every interpretation was more or less right 
and had to be tolerated provided it did not conflict with the general line 
of the Reformers' intention, and provided — last not least — that it did 
not lead back to Rome. The ochlocratic "liberal" is indeed in a difficult 
position toward the followers of terroristic heresies and his belief that 
"truth stands by itself" has often proved to be suicidal. He is therefore 
inclined to abandon his liberalism and to turn ochlocracy into a brutal 
totalitarianism. Luther with his ducal and baronial disciples was followed 
by terrorists of the type of Calvin, Thomas Miinzer or Jan van Leyden, 
just as Robespierre succeeded Mirabeau and Noailles. 

Rousseau, though holding views diametrically opposed to Luther's as 
to the character of man, finally strengthened his hand by his estimate of 
man's mind. Luther believed in the utter moral wretchedness of man, but 
Rousseau believed not only in man's goodness on the plane of character 
but he also was convinced (like Luther) that man is by nature intelligent. 
The "democrats" of the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries 
deducted from Luther's and Rousseau's joint declaration that man is 
intelligent (either by nature or by an inner light) the further conclusion 
that the sum total of all minds must be perfection itself. Catholicism, on 
the other hand, never accepted Luther's theories about the catastrophical 
consequences of Original Sin, yet the Church never got rid of the impres- 
sion although not dogmatizing about it that the average man can be 
obsessed by an almost limitless stupidity. The Church is in this matter 



42 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

fortunately or rather unfortunately right — depending upon the merits 
one is willing to attribute either to heart or head. 

Happily enough we find that even the most fanatic ochlocrats seldom 
try to carry out their quantitarian collectivism and egalitarianism and to 
reduce them to absurdities. There are still some inequalities of a bio- 
logical order which they must respect; the franchise has not yet been 
extended to the children — if we do not take into account the efforts to 
"make democracy work" in certain schools where boys and girls deter- 
mine what they would like to hear from their teachers and how much 
work they will condescend to do. 

But still, the political franchise is not given to minors and there is 
little doubt that by this fact the democratic principles are already 
violated. The Utopia runs into troubled waters. If neither knowledge, nor 
work, experience, sex, or taxes make any difference, why then, we ask 
ourselves, should age be taken so seriously? One could imagine that a 
European university student at the age of nineteen is more intelligent than 
a street cleaner at the age of thirty, or that a wounded young soldier at 
the age of twenty has merited more of his country than a prostitute at 
the age of forty-five. Even if one lowers the age limit there will always 
be some who are younger and who will complain that they are tyran- 
nized over by a gerontocracy, a rule of old men.* Pure "democracy" is for 
this and other reasons a political impossiblity and we have to ask our- 
selves whether it is prudent to adopt such a form of political existence 
which defies all efforts to make it work without a tremendous amount 
of alloys. Utopias never mature over a certain transitory stage in which 
they insure their survival by endless compromising.™ "Democracy" under 
present conditions is bound to compromise with political elements taken 
from aristocratic and monarchical forms of government. A parliament is 
always a compromise with the former and a president a compromise with 
the latter political ideology. Aristocracy and monarchy — both taken in 
a literal, not a traditional sense — are essential and indispensable polit- 
ical elements; there is even "government" in the case of the population 
being entirely passive. We have to face the bitter fact that the (inner) 
consent of those governed is under modern conditions rather an ac- 
cidental than an essential of government. There may be even a good gov- 



* Democratic rights for school children have been postulated by the disciples of John 
Dewey, while David Lloyd George demanded in all earnestness plebiscites for the Central 
African jungles (in a public speech on Jan. S, 1918). 



OCHLOCRACY AND DEMOCRATISM 43 

ernment without popularity and a bad government enthusiastically sup- 
ported by the "howling mob." Not even the moral question is solved by 
the presence or absence of support, and there will be few political casuists 
who will argue that the people have an inherent right to wickedness 
which may be enforced against a good but unpopular government.* 

It is certain that worship of quantity is one of the most important char- 
acteristics of modern democratism, 29 a characteristic which finds its liv- 
ing expression in the increasing interest for the comparison of physical 
units in the form of statistics. This ochlocratic quantitativism fosters also 
the belief that the mathematically larger part of the nation has the right 
to transform its theories into practice. There is nevertheless another ele- 
ment which ought not be overlooked; the element of compromise. The 
voter in every country has first to make a compromise between his own 
views and those of the local candidate, who in turn has to compromise 
with his party. 30 In countries without the two-party system the compro- 
mise is extended to one between the parties for the sake of coalitions. 
The coalitions in their turn compromise with "reality." 

Thus it is the outcome of the election which finally decides whether 
the individual voter belonged to the ruling or the ruled group. Parlia- 
mentary governments are now unfortunately always governments of 
numeric majorities ; a supporter of the Conservative Party in Sweden 
has no more opportunity to influence the destinies of his country than a 
Russian or an Italian citizen in spite of the fact that Sweden is a 
"democracy" and the other two countries dictatorships. There is at 
present as much chance for the Swedish Conservatives to gain a majority 
as there is hope for the Constitutional Democrats in the Russian emigra- 
tion to be readmitted to a reopened Imperial Duma. This is a shortcom- 
ing of modern Representative Government which should be remedied. 

Yet the question may be raised whether "democratic" states are not 
far more conscious of civil liberties as regards private or public opinion. 
It must be remembered in that connection that liberty and democracy are 
not synonymous in spite of the fact that these two terms are frequently 
confounded in "democracies" with an aristocratic-liberal historical back- 
ground. Numerical majorities are not necessarily keen to preserve civil 
liberties ; 31 the demand for civil liberties (and privileges) always arose 
from select minorities. Genuinely "democratic" societies can be brutally 



* About the problem of "democracy" in relation to the popular representation in the 
United States. See pp. 247-248. 



44 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

cruel to those who dare to be "different" in an unconventional way. 32 

If we look now at the individual from a political point of view in a 
"democratic" setup, we can consider him as entirely "lost" in an ocean 
of votes and voters. There are, for instance, in the United States millions 
of voters who out of a feeling of disgust, laziness, or hopeless despair 
refuse to go to the polls. There are thousands in every country boasting 
of a popular representation who do not even faintly agree with any of the 
existing political parties. These people are to all practical purposes de- 
prived of any participation in government. Whereas almost everybody 
was excluded in the times of absolute monarchies from having a share 
in the government, the Parliamentarian Monarchies and Republics in- 
vited eagerly everybody to take a hand in the shaping of the political 
destiny of his country. Yet the effort contributed by the individual in 
America or in prewar France will only be, respectively, one seventy mil- 
lionth or one twelve millionth of the sum total of the popular "deci- 
sion." If one would compare the total of all possible votes in the United 
States with the height of the Empire State building in New York, the 
individual vote would be in proportion roughly 5 /*, i.e., the five-thou- 
sandth part of an inch; thus the importance of the individual is prac- 
tically nil. He is only important as an atom in a mass. And Modern Con- 
stitutionalism prided itself that it attaches importance to the individual 
who in his turn embraced Parliamentarianism to be important. This farce 
becomes more apparent when we remember with what pitying contempt 
the citizens of "great democracies" looked down at the "subjects" of 
European monarchies as mere chattel, forgetful of their submicroscopic 
importance in their own political system.* 



* While man living in the old, traditional form of culture is a dreamer, modern, 
ochlocratic man is frequently the victim of illusions. 

The dreamer, or the man of phantasy, creates his own world. He is creative. The 
illusionist believes in a statement or a formula which he does not analyze critically or 
put to a test. He is a victim of exogen influences and shares these influences with 
others. There are mass illusions but no mass dreams. Dreams are personal and supra- 
rational. Illusions belong usually to the "rational" order and their acceptance is due to 
mental laziness. If a man believes that he is in a democracy not only a citizen but also 
a "ruler" he must be clearly unaware of the fact that his alternative is either to be 
ruled by millions of his fellow citizens in the person of their choice (a very totalitarian 
control indeed) or merely to share as a microscopic agent in the election of his own 
choice. The person in a political system based on masses or numbers is always the loser. 

We find a thundering condemnation of the idea of ochlocratic elections in a contribution 
of Ren6 Schwob, the well-known Jewish convert, in F. Mauriac's and Eugenio d'Ors's 
symposium "L'Homme et le pichi" (Paris, 1938, pp. 121-122). 

"The electoral hypocrisy," he writes, "is for me the very symbol of the hypocrisy of 
all times. Its gravity depends on the fact that it is directed at naive masses which are 



OCHLOCRACY AND DEMOCRATISM 45 

Of course, there are people in countries run by representative govern- 
ments — some voting, some not — who try to influence the policy of their 
government in the traditional way. By dining out with a cabinet minister 
or with the secretary of the premier, by chatting with the President or 
submitting to his collaborators a memorandum, they have a far greater 
influence than by casting a mere vote. There is little doubt that men like 
Metternich, the Cecils, Araktcheyev, Colbert, Grotius, Ximenez, Briihl, 
and Talleyrand (some of them of humble origin) influenced the destinies 
of their States under absolute monarchs more than millions of voters 
today. The thought that a vote has only a value if it is cast together 
with millions of others should have for thinking persons something rather 
depressing than uplifting. Yet the defenders of general franchise subcon- 
sciously take into consideration that thinking human beings form only a 
tiny minority in the herdist ocean. 

One might object that anybody is free in a liberal and "democratic" 
state to start a new party of his own. But to start a new party money is 
needed. It is true to a certain extent that money may be substituted by 
wild, irresponsible demagogy which necessitates a total prostitution of 
the leader and his ideals before the masses. The history of the National- 
Socialist Party — the greatest success story of a party within the frame- 
work of democracy — shows that it is wise to combine both elements ; 
empty oratory "intelligible" to everybody as well as hard cash. A party, 
furthermore, with high and lofty aims which could not be properly under- 
stood by the uneducated and semieducated masses, would not have a 
dog's chance to succeed in an ochlocratic atmosphere and there are a few 
things more depressing than to study official party programs. Parties, 
however just and noble though they may be in their ultimate goal, have 
always to keep within the "spirit of the time" of which the masses, and 
in democratic cultures the "intellectuals," also, are the most docile slaves. 
To keep the large variety of political opinions within large nations in the 
fold of only two parties may be rather depressing from an intellectual 
point of view but the establishment of third and fourth parties in the 
two-party countries of today would mean in all probability the death 
knell to liberal "democracy." (One must not forget that under present 

easily flattered. All our personal hypocrisies are derived from this central form of 
imposture. At least this is true of France. . . . The hypocrisy which surrounds us is the 
imposture of number and quantity. It subjects us to the least human forces and powers." 
Not in vain has a noted Austrian thinker called the nineteenth century the century of 
illusion and the present age the century of lie. This change corresponds to the transforma- 
tion of democracy to party dictatorship; illusion enforced is lie. 



46 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

conditions the sole beneficiaries of such an action would be the nonliberal 
democrats of the totalitarian brand in Berlin, Moscow, and Rome.) 

Certain ideas and ideologies can never be successfully represented by 
parties. We know the history of the endless failures of conservative 
parties. It was Spengler who first pointed out that there is no such thing 
as a successful conservative party. A party is a political body built spe- 
cially for the purpose of fitting into the structure of a nineteenth century 
parliament. 33 A conservative "party" is just as miserable as a third 
"estate." 34 

Integral ochlocracy of course favored the one-man one-vote system be- 
cause it hoped to crush a surviving oligarchical rule by the weight of 
sheer numbers. Marxism started more or less as a revolutionary move- 
ment, but it retained its revolutionary character only in countries with 
slow industrial development where the laboring classes remained a 
minority. The Second International in western Europe allied itself 
eagerly with the "democratic" forces thus hoping to repeat the attaque- 
en-masse of the bourgeois democrats by bloodless, constitutional means. 

We have represented in the last paragraph ochlocracy in juxtaposition 
to monarchy; we must not forget in that connection that the intimate 
alliance between monarchy, aristocracy, and clergy was unknown prior 
to the French Revolution. Only second-rate historians would consider 
the coalition between throne, altar, and nobility a standard phenomenon. 
These elements formed usually a triangle of opposing forces. The bour- 
geoisie largely benefited from the tension between these three powers. 
Kings and emperors usually received support from the urban elements 
in their struggle against the powerful aristocratic oligarchs, and in some 
religious rebellions we see similarly a coalition between the First and 
Third Estate against the Second. It is perfectly true that the aristocracy 
was usually the bitterest enemy of monarchical power, but on the other 
hand there is equally little doubt that no class contributed more to the 
cause of freedom than the First Estate, the Nobility, which fought every 
centralism with determination and everywhere laid the foundation stones 
for constitutional government. This is specially true of the English, 
French, Hungarian, Polish, Spanish, and Baltic nobility. 

If we look at France prior to the outbreak of the Revolution we must 
bear in mind that the larger part of the French aristocracy was toward 
the end of the eighteenth century an aulic nobility, an agglomeration of 
moons who received their light from the monarchical sun. A Henri IV, a 



OCHLOCRACY AND DEMOCRATISM 47 

James II, an Ivan the Terrible, or the Portuguese Monarchs of the fif- 
teenth century had still endless troubles with the representatives of the 
First Estate. The better part of the French aristocracy was inebriated 
by a feeling of liberty when Louis XIV died.* The Polish kings after 
1572 were the mere heads of a republic (Rzeczpospolita) of noblemen, 
and the relations of kings of Hungary with the native aristocracy were 
characterized, on account of the Golden Bull and the right of armed 
resistance, by numerous frictions, risings, and rebellions. The Hungarian 
"Golden Bull," issued in 1222, only seven years after the Magna Charta 
Libertatum, is together with this great English document of privileged 
power, one of the most important pillars of antidemocratism in Europe. 
The Whigs in England were, till the beginning of the nineteenth century, 
an aristocratic party having unfortunately slightly too intimate relation- 
ships with the moneybags of the city ; yet they may readily have been a 
more genuinely independent aristocratic party than the Tories who repre- 
sented the aristocracy of the court, consisting sometimes of titled people 
who had risen as scribes from the ranks of the lower bourgeoisie, together 
with that part of the landed aristocracy which put loyalty before liberty. 

The older Arragonese or Castilian aristocracy showed hardly a lesser 
spirit of independence than the Spanish cities which were so proud of 
their ancient privileges, the fueros. 35 The rigid absolutism encouraged by 
the Reformation infected finally even the rulers of the Iberic Peninsula 
and the Basque privileges were the only ones that survived till the Carlist 
wars and after. 

Neither is the spectacle of noblemen embracing the cause of Repub- 
licanism rare. There were numerous noblemen fighting in the American 
Revolution and a fair amount of Polish as well as Russian aristocrats 
who were fiery republicans and even anarchists. The larger part of the 
Hungarian nobility dropped their titles in 1848-49. Pactically all the 
leaders of the nationalist rising against Austria belonged to the gentry or 
the aristocracy. Kossuth, Damjanich, Klapka, Batthany, Teleki, Leinin- 
gen-Westerburg are just a few names of many. It was a Count Karolyi who 
proclaimed Hungary a republic in 1918. Yet the reason for the failure of 
the national revolution in 1848 has to be found in the circumstance that 
the broad masses did not cooperate in spite of many democratic conces- 
sions. The same thing was true of the Polish risings in 1830 and 1863. The 
Polish gentry finally learned that a levee en masse can only be successful 
with the cooperation of the lower classes. There was a turn to socialism, 



* Cf. Bernard Fay's excellent Freemasonry and Revolution. (Boston, 1935.) 



48 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

and Jozef Pilsudski was such a socialist with a gentry background who 
helped to found the last Polish Republic. 

There is no doubt that a republic is the ideal form of government for 
an aristocracy. An aristocracy which wants to rule directly (instead of 
serving a ruler) has practically only the choice between an ephemeral 
monarchy of the English type or a downright republic after the pattern 
of Venice, Genoa, or early Florence. Monarchy was historically always 
the best protection against any sort of obligarchical rule and it was the 
historic role of monarchs to side with the lower classes against the 
nobility. 36 (This "system" had the unfortunate consequence, of weaken- 
ing federalism* and of strengthening centralism, with its ultimate herdist 
excesses.) The existence of a powerful Second Estate completed the 
quadrangle of heterogeneous factors which made a balance of powers 
and a mutual check possible which was the very foundation of medieval 
liberty. 

Every vigorous and independent aristocracy is "republican" ; only a 
weakened and degenerate, or a very wise aristocracy stands for Monarchy. 
The American whiggish aristocracy of 1774 belongs to the first category, 
the vigorous and independent type. Needless to say that there were many 
squires who had a stronger sense for loyalty than love for independence. 
The clash between Whigs and Tories on American soil was a clash be- 
tween the two noble passions — freedom and loyalty. 

The great merit of aristocracy in the past was the jealous preservation 
of their privileges. Privileges were and are "liberties," if not for any 
other reason then certainly for their anti-egalitarian character. It makes 
good sense that the coins of the United States display the word liberty, 
but not the word equality. Liberty is the ideal of aristocracy, just as 
equality stands for the bourgeoisie and fraternity for the peasantry.** 



* By federalism we clearly understand a tendency which is the very opposite of federal- 
ism in the American sense. We have to distinguish between centralism, federalism, and 
separatism; centralism wants the whole concentration of power in a single body, federal- 
ism demands a division of power with a marked influence of local administration, sepa- 
ratism recognizes local power only and stands thus clearly for the dissolution of the 
state into independent parts. 

**This idea has been well developed in Josef Leo Seifert's brilliant work Die 
Weltrevolutionare (Von Bogumil uber Hus zu Lenin), Vienna, 1930. This work is based 
on P. Wilhelm Schmidt's and Grabner's Kulturkreislehre. It is also symptomatic that the 
leaders of the republican movements of Italy, Hungary, and Austria are all titled; 
Count Sforza, Count Ferdinand Czernin and Count Michael Karolyi. A scion of the 
princely family Lowenstein represents German republicanism in the United States. (The 
reader is warned that the terms "First Estate" and "Second Estate" for the Nobility 
and Clergy are interchangeable as they are not really historical. Only the term "Third 
Estate" is unequivocal.) 



OCHLOCRACY AND DEMOCRATISM 49 

One can combine liberty with fraternity but neither of them with equality. 
It must be stated again in all candor that equality presupposes force 
on account of its unnaturalness. Force is the end of liberty as well as 
of fraternity. In order to level a landscape full of mountains and valleys 
one needs dynamite, tractors, picks, and shovels. By filling the valleys 
with the mountaintops a level with a uniform altitude could be estab- 
lished. Thus there is only liberty or equality. 37 The fact that the ochlo- 
cratic Utopia of the year a.d. 3000 contains both elements is hardly able 
to contradict this truism effectively. Yet the more sinister aspect of the 
problem lies in the circumstance that democratism and its allied herd 
movements, while remaining loyal to the principle of equality and 
identity, will never hesitate to sacrifice liberty.* 



* Montesquieu expressed in his De I'espirit des lois (Livre XI, Ch. IV) the belief that 
neither the aristocratic nor the democratic form of government are "free" by nature. 
See also the criticisms of Vilfredo Pareto in his The Mind and Society, §§ 1608, 1609, 
New York, 1935. The urge for uniformity in his Trattato Delia Sociologia is discussed, 
§§1115-1130. 



Ill 

THE BOURGEOIS AND CAPITALISM 



"The true nature of the Reformation is not found in its 
intention but in its result. Modern democracy is the child of 
the Reformation and not of the reformers. Of the latter, 
inconsistency is the chief characteristic." — G. P. Gooch, 
English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century. 

There was, of course, a bourgeoisie all through the greater part of the 
Middle Ages, yet in spite of the urban forms of life egalitarianism hardly 
made itself felt. The personal pride was still strong; Biirgerstolz and 
Burgerehre prevailed, and the religious atmosphere, in a concentrated 
form, rendered an earthly craving for equality and identity superfluous 
and ridiculous. The bourgeoisie and the nobility lived practically each 
in another world. They had their sanguinary fights and their bitter in- 
trigues, yet they seldom saw each other face to face. But an increased 
sense of ambition, the coming into existence of an urban, aulic nobility, 
and the decay of religious life added to the friction and the desire to be 
"equal." Egalitarianism starts from a feeling of inferiority, and the hatred 
against the urban aristocracy played a certain role in the fostering of this 
sentiment. An even more potent agent in this increase of envy was the 
mounting grudge against the Second Estate, the clergy. 38 

The antimonarchical feelings are only the latest phase of this move- 
ment against hierarchical forms. Even Diderot, the French encyclopedist, 
harbored royalist feelings. Once he saw during a visit in Copenhagen the 
King of Denmark throwing his hat into the air. One of his subjects 
caught it. "How happy this man must have been!" our famous liberal 
wrote with a sigh, "to get hold, even for a moment, of the headgear of his 
beloved monarch." Yet the hatred against the aristos was already strong 
and grew even stronger once the bourgeoisie was mixing in the salons 

so 



THE BOURGEOIS AND CAPITALISM 51 

with the Parisian nobility. Nearness does not always create love. The 
Prussians are loathed in Bavaria and the Bavarians are liked in Prussia 
because there are Prussian tourists in Bavaria but no Bavarian tourists 
in Prussia. 

Toward the end of the eighteenth century the back of the bourgeoisie 
was stiffened sufficiently by its increase in wealth. The decades preceding 
the French Revolution are characterized by financial worries of the 
government but it would be wrong to reach therefore unfavorable con- 
clusions as to the financial status of the middle classes. There was general 
well-being and the number of nouxeaux riches had increased considerably.* 

During the Middle Ages only the Jews were permitted to take interest. 
St. Thomas Aquinas agreed with Aristotle that taking of interest was 
usury and the Church acted accordingly. The lender, however, was per- 
mitted to take compensation for the gain he would forego, the loss he 
would encounter, the risk he would run, or whatever other external title 
their might be. But the Reformers, who either thought that they had to 
liberate a suffering humanity from the shackles of a terrorizing Church 
or believed that they had to give some compensations in return for their 
own brutal regimentation, permitted the charging of interest; thus the 
formation of modern capitalism was promoted. 

Luther was naturally more successful if we measure the damage he 
has done by mere numbers, but Jean Cauvin was undoubtedly the 
more radical fighter who left the marks of his ideas all over the world. 
His theocratic city state of Geneva had still a few aristocratic traits, but 
its soul was already essentially ochlocratic and bourgeois. At the time 
of his death we find a highly developed middle-class civilization and 
culture of a capitalistic and semirepublican character in the countries 
of the Rhine valley — in Switzerland, in the Palatinate, in Alsace, in 
Holland — but a similar process under the same accelerating influence 
can also be observed in districts further away: in southern France, in 
the British Isles, and in eastern Hungary. Apart from a few poets we 
see these followers of Calvin contributing very little to the arts and 
letters. They lacked painters, musicians, architects of originality ; hilarity 
was for them suspect and their humor was limited. In their political 
activities they displayed strange and disquieting tendencies; in North 
America they brought the Indians, with the help of bullets, whisky, and 



♦Thanks to the Commercial treaty of 1788 (the Eden-Act) imports and exports 
reached an all time high in the 12 months before the revolution — a record which could 
only be broken in the nineteenth century. 



52 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

infected blankets, almost to a vanishing point. In England they led the 
first great attack against the institution of monarchy in Christian history, 
in Ireland they displayed their homicidal talents in the most brutal type 
of warfare, in South Africa they established republics in which the in- 
stitution of slavery survived till the threshold of the twentieth century, 
in Hungary they allied themselves with the pagan Turks and in Japan 
with the Shintoists against the Catholics.* Two hundred years after 
their first appearance they controlled, together with the Lutherans, 
almost all of Europe's new civilization with the exception of France 
where the Huguenot leaven had already done its work. The Lutherans 
remained superior in number, but as semirevolutionaries they remained 
in the shadow of the disciples of Calvin. And last not least, it is Calvin- 
istic theology which finds its clear expression in the Thirty-Nine Articles 
of the Church of England. It would be fatally erroneous to be misled 
in the psychological evaluation of the British State Churches by the 
aesthetic proclivities of its pseudo-Catholic ritualism. 

The Calvinists (like the early Jews under the Old Dispensation) con- 
sidered the increase of material wealth a sign of divine favor. Methodi- 
cally they built up great fortunes, thus establishing a visible sign of 
God's approving attitude toward them; Jehovah obviously rewarding 
the just and righteous with success and hard cash. 39 Praise was bestowed 
upon hard work and disdain upon all earthly pleasures. Consequently 
one should not be surprised to see the Catholic South at the beginning 
of the nineteenth century being already surpassed by the industrious 
North in matters of material welfare. Spain, Portugal, and Italy were con- 
sidered by Northerners to be countries of mere archeological interest 
full of loafing monks, romantic ruins, and lovers playing the guitar. 
For the tourists coming from England, Holland, or the Baltic countries, 



* It ought never to be forgotten that the Turks in their desperate onslaughts against 
the Austrians were usually supported by Magyar Calvinist auxiliary troops led by 
Transylvanian officers. Emmeric Thokoly headed a large contingent of Calvinists at the 
last Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683. Had Vienna fallen Europe might have become 
Mohammedan. The two great fatalistic religions of the Prophets of Geneva and Mecca 
seemed to have attracted each other. 

The Dutch intrigues against the Jesuits in Japan were not less significant; their sug- 
gestions to the Shogun that the Catholics in general and Jesuits in particular were out- 
lawed "all over the world" on account of their hostility toward organized government, 
resulted in an atrocious persecution. The Catholics finally made their last stand in the 
fortress of Shimabara where 10,000 of them — men, women, and children — defended 
themselves with heroic courage. The Shogun, unable to take the stronghold had to apply 
for help to the Dutch who lent him their guns which alone were able to destroy the 
walls. The inhabitants were all massacred but the sons of Calvin in return for their 
service received a monopoly in trade. 



THE BOURGEOIS AND CAPITALISM S3 

the Mediterranean parts of Europe were nothing else but large agglomera- 
tions of illiterate beggars, bravos, and unshaven toreros. The other 
Catholic countries were considered to be tainted similarly by the stigma 
of inferiority ; Austria-Hungary, which enjoyed Gladstone's special wrath, 
figured as a deplorable survival from the Middle Ages and France was 
only respected in so far as she harbored atheistic elements. The fate of 
Poland, the decay of the clergy in Hungary and Mexico, the drunkenness 
of the Irish and the pronunciamentos in South America — they all served 
to complete the picture of a rotten and "backward" Catholicism. Belfast 
prospered while Dublin was just dear, dirty Dublin. It was pointed out 
that the French Protestants — hardly a million people — possessed a 
full eighth of the French national wealth. One had only to compare the 
Protestants of Western Latvia with the Catholic Latgalians or Lithuanians 
to see all the difference between Wittenberg-Geneva and Rome, between 
today and yesterday. 

These comparisons, so unfavorable for those who adhered to the 
traditional religious form of Europe, were pragmatically fair. It took 
the Catholics with their lack of ambition and their frankly quixotic 
character a good long time to wake up and to realize that they were 
in a new and non-Christian world where the stock exchange, the gun 
factory, and the technological institute counted more than singing, paint- 
ing, praying, and daydreaming. And when it was found out that mineral 
wealth, having become of paramount importance after the Industrial 
Revolution, was largely under the control of Protestant nations, it seemed 
that Calvin's God had rewarded liberally the industrious disciples of 
the Old Testament. 

The Catholic nations, ill adjusted to modern conditions, were further- 
more hampered in their development by a bitter fight between darkest 
reaction and dirtiest anticlericalism, while there was nothing but harmony, 
cooperation, and understanding between state, religion, science, philos- 
ophy, and society in the Protestant world. Religion was a loyal servant 
of the state, the "national" churches in turn were controlled by benevo- 
lent kings or princes, and religion made every possible and im- 
possible concession to "scientific" innovations or social tendencies. The 
Protestant-democratic principle of compromise and the lack of an all- 
comprising philosophy (a Weltanschauung, the Germans would say) 
relieved almost every tension; a British peer, a German Geheimrat, a 
Swedish officer, or a Danish editor could be freemasons, members of 
conservative parties, Protestant church patrons, Darwinian evolutionists, 



54 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

militarists, and monarchists in one and the same person. The Scandi- 
navian kings were almost without exception freemasons ; ministers denied 
the divinity of Christ, "conservatives" admired Voltaire.* 

In Catholic countries the situation was entirely different and the 
issues stood out in brutal clearness. The cry £crasez I'Infame! was 
never forgotten or dead; the Camorra and the Carbonari, the Los-von- 
Rom movement, the Galilei circles of the Hungarian universities, and 
the Grand Orient of Paris worked in full blast; the names of Combes, 
Waldeck-Rousseau, Weckerle, Renan, Mazzini, Briand, Schonerer, and 
Ferrer were in the ears of everybody. The Lutherans and Calvinists be- 
sieged the Church from the outside, the Eastern Schism sent its Pan- 
Slav cavalry into attack, and the most diverse enemies of the Church 
burrowed from the inside. Even the exterior front line against the Church 
was made up from the most heterogeneous elements. Not only Dosto- 
yevski and Clemenceau, Briand and Renan could be found in the op- 
posite trenches, but also Albert Pike and the Russian Emperor, Bebel, 
and the Archbishop of Uppsala, Jewish intellectuals and Prussian army 
officers. For the Nationalists the Church was an organization of inter- 
national conspirators, for the Marxists, opium for the people based on 
metaphysical superstition, for certain "conservatives," an inimical 
foreign power ultra monies, for the neo-Liberals an enemy of progress, 
for the Pravoslavs a materialistic heresy. There were capitalists who 
considered the Church to be an agent of socialism, thanks to the encycli- 
cals of Leo XIII, and Socialists who visualized her as a protagonist of 
some sort of capitalist feudalism. One must make the concession that 
this common hatred against the Church had also a positive aspect; it 
united the Occident in a common goal and thus it created a focal point 
which the West had not possessed since the Reformation. 

Money was certainly a means of the ochlocratic middle classes to 



* France frequently had Protestant presidents or prime ministers. Imperial Russia per- 
mitted only Schismatics and Protestants in the higher ranks of the army and the civil 
service. The head of the Protestant (Lutheran) Church in Russia was the Russian 
Emperor himself. Catholics belonged to an intrinsically "unpatriotic" religion; in spite 
of the greater theological affinities between Catholicism and Pravoslavism, no Catholic 
could get a rank higher than that of a colonel (and the corresponding one in state 
officialdom) . 

Similar discriminations are still enforced in such "democracies" as, for instance, Sweden, 
where no Catholic can become a State Minister. This attitude should be compared with 
that of Italy which frequently had non-Catholics in high offices. (Sidney Sonnino, for 
instance, was a Jew, son of a Levantine Jew and an English mother.) Rome had for 
many years, in the person of Signor Nathan, a Jewish mayor. 



THE BOURGEOIS AND CAPITALISM 55 

fight their victorious battles against the First and Second Estates, and 
this is one of the reasons why democratism and capitalism had such a 
fine tradition of intimate cooperation in the past. In spite of its hideous 
excesses and its fundamental amorality, there is a certain debt of grati- 
tude we owe to capitalism. Due to its Manchesterian background and 
its anarchic tendencies it created a diverting chaos which saved a certain 
amount of liberty for the nineteenth century. On account of the intel- 
lectual muddle caused by the forerunners and epigones of the French 
Revolution we see capitalism infecting even ochlocracy with its liberal- 
istic conceptions. In spite of the ominous beginning with the guillotine 
and such blood curdling performances as could be rendered in print by 
"private" publications only,* humanity had the rare privilege of witness- 
ing the development of ochlocracy and capitalism tempered and mellowed 
by the dying beams of the setting sun of liberalism. 

Ochlocracy in the nineteenth century was indeed sweet and persuasive 
and capitalism helped it to spread its ideology by advertising and 
propaganda. Freedom, menaced by such honest radicals as Robespierre 
and eighty years later by La Cecilia, seemed to be restored forever. The 
masses in their naive enthusiasm and optimism were still far from 
seeing the demoniacal qualities inherent in either majoritarianism or 
in the rule of the machines. Capitalism and "democracy" shared the tech- 
nics of the art of persuasion ; they are both essentially anthropocentric 
in this pretentious going to the public, as well as in their undignified, 
megaphonical appeal to the herd. Yet there is more than just accidental 
coincidence in the sharing of the methodical approach between ochlocracy 
and the two forms of capitalism ; "liberal" private capitalism and so- 
cialist state capitalism. 

In the remote background there can clearly be seen Johann Gutenberg, 
father of mechanical writing, the innocent promoter of the "intellec- 
tual," or rather semieducated masses, grandfather of the press. The 
blind, awe-filled worship of the printed word was to be initiated a cen- 
tury after Gutenberg by Protestantism with its bibliolatry. The printed 
word is highly honored in all Protestant countries and the "Book of 
Books," the Bible, ranges there as a primus inter pares inspiring respect 
before its lesser cousins. It is therefore in the Protestant countries that 
we see the worship of the printed word which developed into the 
"science" of advertising, and the religious veneration of the daily press by 



* See Cabanes and Nass: La NH'rose Revohitionnaire. Paris, 1924, p. 85 ff. 



56 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

the masses. 40 If we compare the South German with the North German, 
for instance, we will see all the difference; the former remained always 
skeptical toward anything printed and expresses his distrust in the cur- 
rent phrase : "He lies like print."* 

It is, of course, in a way more human to believe the wildest rumors 
as long as they go from mouth to mouth and are told "into the face" 
than to trust a printed, usually anonymous piece of information. It is 
therefore natural, even if amazing, to see in Anglo-Saxon countries a 
tremendous amount of money spent on advertised articles which are 
only worth a fraction of the price asked for them. The wretched cus- 
tomer simply forgets that he has to pay for the millions spent on ad- 
vertisements covering houses, streetcars, newspapers, magazines, and 
highways.** Needless to say it is only in print-believing Protestant coun- 
tries that people fall under the spell of advertising campaigns ; the manu- 
facturer or seller who would spend a proportionally equal sum for adver- 
tising the same merchandise in France, Italy, or Poland as in England 
or America would simply waste his money. This truly arch-ochlocratic 
■way of influencing and hypnotizing people, who often fall victims to 
gigantic frauds, does not only require print-believing beings for victims 
but also an ochlocratically inclined culture — a homogeneous sand heap — 
in which the necessarily uniform appeal reaches mentally uniform human 
beings.* 1 

This leads us to another ochlocratic problem: the bourgeois origin of 
ochlocracy in relation to an integral political and cultural egalitarian- 
ism. 12 The "democratic" formula of an all-human equality was invented 
in order to fight the First and Second Estates with "ethical" arguments. 
There was, without having been publicly recognized, always a Fourth 
and even a Fifth Estate. The capitalistic bourgeoisie of the nineteenth 
century (mainly if we consider the upper-middle classes) stood for an 
election system which excluded the lower classes even from indirect 
influence in the government. The middle-class "democrat" frequently 
dreads the manual laborer, who often sided with the aristocrat,*** and 
he usually hates the peasant politically, partly on account of the in- 



* Er liigt wie gedruckt. 

** It is interesting to note that many people attacked the textbooks of Professor Rugg 
of Teachers' College as "subversive" because they contain a total condemnation of 
advertising. (See numerous letters sent to the New York Journal and American by its 
readers during the years 1939-1940.) 

*** The old German Center Party consisted largely of Catholic trade-unionists led 
by aristocrats. 



THE BOURGEOIS AND CAPITALISM 57 

grained loathing of the agrarian elements against the city, partly on 
account of the conservative-patriarchal structure and tendencies of the 
farming population. The "democrats" for a long time have been reluctant 
to grant universal suffrage in view of such alarming manifestations as the 
peasant-aristocratic rising in the Vendee against the bourgeois revolu- 
tion in Paris, the rebellion of the Scottish Highlanders against the mam- 
monistic House of Hanover, the formation of Catholic parties in Central 
Europe largely recruited from priests and peasants. Only in the twentieth 
century, through constant pressure from the socialists, has the demand 
fpr income brackets and educational standards in connection with suf- 
frage been dropped. 

The opposition against universal suffrage in a country stands in in- 
verse ratio to the strength of the middle class. Yet the bourgeois does 
not mind extending the franchise in case there is a tendency on the 
part of the peasant to become an agrarian bourgeois (a "farmer") or 
of the worker to reach middle-class standards with the help of higher 
wages. The bourgeois wants to "increase" his class. As a matter of fact 
he stands ideally for the one-class state like the Communist; the only 
difference is that the orthodox ("continental") Communist in his more 
apocalyptic craving wants to level everybody to zero whereas the middle 
class ochlocrats dream of making the average man the iron norm. Thus 
the terror of mediocrity comes into conflict with the terror of inferiority. 

The more moderate socialists (the bourgeoisized Marxist) contributed 
nevertheless more to the establishment of universal suffrage on the 
European continent than the "democrats" themselves. The larger the 
proletariat in a given country, the more probable the chance that it 
could reach its goal within the framework of democratic parliamen- 
tarianism through its sheer weight of numbers. But the larger the prole- 
tariat, the more it became injected with bourgeois political ideas. The 
smaller a proletariat, the less hope it had to gain power through universal 
suffrage and the more radical it became. This is the reason we saw com- 
munist revolutions in Russia, Hungary, and Bavaria but not in England 
or Belgium. 

We have seen that the "democrats" are not very dogmatic about their 
ideas and that they revise their principles according to circumstances. 
They found special pleasure in withdrawing in certain European coun- 
tries the right to vote from the military forces, the secular clergy, and 
the religious orders. 43 Naturally the ochlocratic and egalitarian prin- 
ciple also demands female suffrage, but certain leftist groups had their 



58 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

doubts and scruples about the application of their dogmas. This 
is mainly true of the Latin countries where women, with the exception 
of a small, but extremely rabid minority, profess strong conservative 
and religious views, and therefore the principle of universal suffrage was 
quietly dropped in countries like republican France, Spain, and Portugal. 

There is another point of contact between democratism and industrial 
capitalism and that is the superstitious belief in "progress." The essence 
of modern capitalism is not slavery of the antique pattern but the pos- 
session of the expensive tools of production by a small plutocratic group 
which controls frequently also the tools of persuasion. The technical de- 
velopment is more responsible than anything else for the depreciation 
of individual labor (the "hands") and the enormous increase of the 
importance of tools. Modern ochlocracy needs "crowds" and the old 
hierarchic and personal societies were hammered into shapeless masses 
by the two great products of "progress" — the megalopolis and the 
factory. "Progress" is (a) a collectivistic and (b) a purely urban ideal 
which evolutionism tried in a certain sense to apply to nature. 

"Progress" is intrinsically connected with the time element, yet medie- 
val man (like every deeply religious man) was eschatologically static. 
To him time was a relative conception because his center — God — stood 
at the same distance to the year 1300 b.c. as to the year a.d. 1300. 

A further common sphere between modern democratism and the tech- 
nological-financial systems of mass production lies in the aforementioned 
collectivism. There used to be once the dominating idea of "Christendom," 
but this was far from being collectivistic in character as it contained 
two hierarchic principles: the visible one from beggar to Pope and 
the invisible one from sinner to saint. "Humanity" as such scarcely 
existed as a living principle in the Middle Ages because man had in 
regard to eternity no collective existence. Individuals sacrificed them- 
selves for their families, their manorial lords, kings, cities, rights, privi- 
leges, religion, their beloved Church or the woman they loved, in fact, 
for everything or anybody to which or to whom they had a personal 
relationship. The anonymous sand-heap "humanity" was unknown to 
medieval man and even the concept of the "nation" was not equivalent 
to a gray mass of unilingual citizens but was looked upon as a hierarchy 
of complicated structure. Sanctity as well as heroism were problems of 
the individual. And in the end brother Death broke each soul from its 
earthly connections and presented it naked, sinful, and entirely alone to 



THE BOURGEOIS AND CAPITALISM 



59 



the Eternal Judge. The collective singular "humanity" was only created 
after the Reformation as a living unit. The relationship between personal- 
ism on the one hand, and individualism and collectivism on the other, 
takes roughly the following form. 



["civil NATION*] 



Personalis** . 
[Culture] 

DlVERSITARIAN 



INDIVIDUALISM 

i . 



COLLECTIVISM 



IDE.NTITARIAN 



Personalism has naturally an inner affinity with culture, while individ- 
ualism and collectivism are inwardly akin to civilization. Culture is practi- 
cally always personal ; with the exception of the cinema and the ballet 
there is no collective art, no collective original creation. A sculpture, a 
picture may be the expression of somebody's personality, a dynamo may 
represent the outcome of thought or intellectual effort, but it never is the 
manifestation of that greater complexity — the soul. 

And while personalism and creative diversity is essentially human, 
the animals can appreciate the products of civilization. A cat will never 
be able to distinguish (in the artistic sense) two different paintings or 
sculptures, but a room provided with central heating, or a frankfurter, 
will have a definite meaning for her. The trend from personalism to 
individualism and collectivism is in more than one way a decline, a lower- 
ing to the mere physical existence of the beast. 

Deism 44 finally gave rise to a conception of God in which He, after 
having created the Universe, retired and left mankind entirely to itself. 
Pantheism had also its share in this destructive process; it deified the 
collective soul of mankind, which by now expected from God neither 
mercy nor grace, and thus the pagan anthropocentrism of our times 
had a blueprint for its philosophical foundations. Human beings started, 
on account of their anthropocentrism, to be shortsighted in the meta- 
physical sense of the word ; they "saw" no longer God but only themselves. 

Democratistic culture and civilization lowered them to the unhierarchic 
sand heap but, paradoxically, did not bring them any nearer to each 
other. The thought of a common creator and a common origin can alone 
unite human beings and it is possible to see the practical application 
of this truth in any religious and patriarchal (or patriarchally religious) 



60 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

society. In the hierarchic Tyrol, people are much nearer to each other 
than in "democratic" New York, and even the Albanian practising his 
vendetta is more good neighborly than the inhabitant of modern Berlin 
or Stockholm. The elevation of "mankind" to an eschatological end 
simply resulted in an incoherent atomism which means loneliness-in-the- 
mass. And that is exactly the democratistic destiny or destiny in the 
megalopolis which is essentially and teletically the same thing. 

The democratistic principles of "massification" (Vermassung) and 
of anthropocentrism are seemingly contradicted by the early "demo- 
cratic" and capitalistic principle of competition. Here we must remember 
again that early democracy and a dying liberalism (aristocratic as well 
as commercial) overlapped each other in time. 45 

Commercial liberalism (liberalism of the Manchesterian type) was 
already deeply influenced by deistic, pantheistic, and anthropocentric 
thought. The conception of life fostered by this economic Weltanschauung 
was accordingly not a struggle toward God, but a very earthly race with 
critical, anxious glances at the neighbors. Material ambition is extolled 
and praised ; there is hardly a man more representative of its advocates 
than Benjamin Franklin, contemporary of Jefferson 46 and forerunner 
of Andrew Jackson. 

It is logical that racing has gained such popularity in all countries 
tainted with the mass spirit. America and England prefer horses and 
greyhounds ; France, bicycles ; Scandinavia, men. A Persian shah, repre- 
sentant of a more medieval world than ours, once was taken to the 
races in a place near Vienna by Emperor Francis Joseph. He asked for 
an explanation of the rules, but when this was given to him he remarked 
in deep illusionment : "Well, one of the horses must be the first ! " 

The enthusiasm of certain Americans and Germans for statistics 
springs from the same source. The spirit of competition between in- 
dividuals is still a survival from the good, old days when the middle 
classes raced against the First and Second Estates. Their ancient weapon, 
money, later becomes the bone of contention between individuals. Capi- 
talism has a stake in this growing envy, for material goods and money 
becomes thus the stimulant of all early bourgeois and ochlocratic civiliza- 
tion made up not of human beings but of homines oeconomici, "cus- 
tomers." This envy, directed toward money, is naturally an envy for 
quantity and not for quality. (The essence of technological capitalism is 
after all mass production and not craftsmanship.) It is needless to 



THE BOURGEOIS AND CAPITALISM 61 

emphasize that this new materialistic, ochlocratic envy is more formi- 
dable in its vehemence and bitterness than anything witnessed before. 
There is also envy in a hierarchical society, envy between the sections 
of society as well as envy between men in identical stations of life, but 
the principle of equality puts everybody in a state of egalitarian ex- 
pectation. To be inferior to anybody else implies almost an elementary 
insufficiency. The egalitarian can simply not accept or consent to such 
a situation and his only possible answer is a chain of desperate efforts 
to overcome the inferiority. If these efforts meet with failure the despair 
may grow into suicide or revolt. 

The bourgeois contribution to democratism overshadows the share of 
any other class. There were a few aristocrats of the late liberal period 
who unwittingly or even purposely fostered democratism and ochlocracy. 
Some of them were "penitent noblemen" a la Tolstoy, some others 
believed themselves to be guided by wisdom when they cooperated with 
the rising class, still others felt the obligation to continue to serve. 47 
They became "clercs" in the sense Julien Benda uses this term. (Cf. La 
trahison des clercs.) 

Yet even peasants and workers have cooperated with the middle classes 
in the advancement of ochlocratic ideas if the culture of their country 
happened to be essentially bourgeois. We find the bourgeois peasant in 
some Protestant-Calvinistic cultures, as, for instance, in Switzerland, Hol- 
land, England, and in the greater part of the United States. It is sympto- 
matic that there is little peasant pride and peasant consciousness in 
Hungary which has a large Calvinistic minority; here the peasant con- 
siders it almost an insult to be called by his real name, preferring kisgazda 
(small economist) to paraszt (peasant). We are here faced with the 
same phenomenon as in England and in the United States, but one 
has to add in all fairness that the Anglo-American farmer is definitely 
not a peasant. In England he is a middle-class proletarian tenant, who 
seldom dwells on his own ground. The English farmer became a landless 
pauper during the unlimited rule of money in the eighteenth century 
and he has never recovered his old free position. His American colleague 
is frequently an estate speculator whose "village" is not in the least a 
village, but, as Spengler says, a scattered bit of "fragmentary mega- 
lopolis." There was a large number of farmers in the West who planted 
and tilled a certain land, used it to the point of exhaustion, cut all the 
timber, and afterward sold the valueless soil. 

The genuine European peasant never thinks about increasing his 



62 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

wealth; he is deeply rooted in the soil and timeless. Just like the prole- 
tarian he works in order to live and not the other way round. He stands 
nearer to nature than the bourgeois, but he is neither an animist, nor a 
pantheist, and least of all a deist. None of these philosophies attract 
him because he is near to nature. He fells trees and knows that they 
are not animated by any spirits, he moves the corn and is well aware 
that it is the wind whispering in the stalks and not the souls of the 
dead. In spite of the fact that his strong imagination is focused on his 
inner world, he is realistic and dry cut. All natural things are near to 
him — they are to him undemoniacal and transparent. Birth, death, 
love, illness, and sex are to him the fundamental facts of life. But the 
dweller of the cities uprooted from his usual artificial surroundings gets 
drunk like Rousseau when left alone with the forces of nature, the 
Urgewalten der Natur, which remind him of eternity and his finiteness. 

The worker, usually of peasant stock, resembles in some respects the 
peasant. He is usually blind to the demoniacal aspects of modern tech- 
nique because he is the builder of the machines. He may, like Heinrich 
Lersch and Alphons Petzoldt, develop a religious poetry with the machine 
as a background but he will never worship dynamos after the fashion 
of a deracine bourgeoisie in the days of early Bolshevism.* Worship of 
nature or machines are typical for urban middle-class groups, who profess 
the tendency to substitute these for God; the peasant or worker will 
rarely fall for such aberrations. Yet all this does not exclude the danger 
that the machine overpowers the worker in a physical or characteriologi- 
cal sense. 

The worker is nevertheless, like the peasant, at least in Europe, not 
a member of a dynamic class. As long as he has not been permeated by 
the spirit of the middle classes he demands nothing more than the life 
minimum and above that he shows little hunger for possession. The 
peasant usually wants only land for land's sake but not as a means of a 
higher standard of living. The worker can therefore only be aroused to 
revolt by the ambitious bourgeois or if his living standard is pressed 
below the minimum. If this is the case, the physical side of man domi- 
nates the scene. We shall not forget that sanctity cannot be achieved 
without bodily existence, that spiritual love alone does not create progeny, 
that St. Thomas Aquinas not only justified "stealing" in case of ex- 
treme need but almost orders it, for it is then no longer "theft." It is the 



* Cf. Rene Fulbp-Miller's Fiihrer, Schwarmer und Rebetten, Miinchen, 1934, pp. 
343-345. 



THE BOURGEOIS AND CAPITALISM 63 

exercise of a prior right. Exceeding this natural affirmation of material, 
ontological existence, the dynamite of a poeticized and intellectualized 
philosophy of life has to intervene in order to intoxicate the workers 
and to send them to the barricades. 

The modern bourgeois is dynamic per se and the totalitarian leaders 
of the twentieth century were shrewd enough to switch his personal rest- 
lessness and his individualist spirit of competition to the collectivistic, 
nationalistic plane. Today we can witness the equally disgusting and 
even more poisonous struggle of urbanized nations struggling desperately 
for "equal standards of living" amongst themselves. 

Before we analyze the natural habitat of the bourgeois it should be 
borne in mind that the English and American aristocratic background 
attaches to this word a derogatory sense which it does not possess in 
French. Even the word middle class has a stigma which is conspicuously 
absent in either German (Mittelstand) , French (Classe moyenne), 
Dutch, Hungarian, or Italian. Only in Russian do we find a slight dis- 
dain and contempt attached to this term. 48 Yet neither should one be- 
come a victim of the general trend to identify rigorously persons with 
their standard social, national, or geographical environment. Not every 
member of the middle class is imbued with the bourgeois spirit, neither 
is every Dane characteriologically a Dane and every mountaineer a high- 
lander. We all make the mistake of identifying the spirit too much with 
the material form of existence, race, or class. Personality evades often 
mysteriously the laws of probability. 

Cradle and home of the bourgeois spirit is nevertheless the town, the 
city, and more than anything else the megalopolis. Yet how can we define 
the "city"? And what is a village? And where is the dividing line be- 
tween a city and a village? The number of the inhabitants is certainly 
not the criterion, for we know of villages in Hungary with forty, fifty, 
and even sixty thousand inhabitants. To a large extent it is therefore 
the occupation of its residents which causally determines the character 
of a settlement. The village lives in closest contact with the land, the 
inhabitants are mostly peasants who work on their fields, meadows, 
pastures, and woods ; homework is only supplementary. Except for the 
looms and dairies, the village has no collective working places, no fac- 
tories, and no offices. It lacks a proletariat (apart from a few paupers) 
and an intelligentsia, with a few necessary exceptions such as the priest, 
doctor, and teacher. 



64 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

The villager meets nature intimately in the settlement ; nature with all 
her laws and seasons determines the life, rhythm, and breathing of the 
village. The villager-peasant is a child of the stars, the winds, the clouds, 
the earth, the rivers. All these are for him concrete and important real- 
ities. Yet the essence of the city is pneumatic ghostliness. The factual and 
pragmatic occupations gradually vanished in the cities; factories re- 
placed shoemakers, carpenters, tailors, blacksmiths, locksmiths, dyers, 
and painters. The artisan who could concentrate all his personal taste 
and talent into a door lock or a pointed shoe had to make room for a 
mechanically creating industrial proletarian, who day after day at certain 
intervals presses a certain handle or places consecutively five thousand 
screws on a running board in deadly monotony. The proletarianized fac- 
tory worker is a comparatively new appearance (or rather: reappearance) 
in the picture of the city. In the superindustrialized modern world he is, 
in spite of his concrete work, no longer a realist — as, for instance, a 
mechanic in a repair shop — but a daydreamer, a sentimentalist, with 
nerves often weakened by the torture of monotonous routine, and there- 
fore he "explodes" from time to time under external influences. He no 
longer masters his tools — the machines — but is mastered by them. 

The men who truly carry on the tradition of the inventive manual 
laborer, the craftsmen, are the different "repairers" and "menders" who 
have hitherto escaped the domination of machinery and monotony. Among 
these we find not only the cobbler or the glass repairer, the watch "maker" 
or the garage mechanic, but also the surgeon. They have to work, it is 
true, on a basic material which may be fabricated, but they have never- 
theless to face individual "damages" and they have to use their analytical 
as well as synthetic mind in order to cope with individually different situ- 
ations. Tailors and chefs de cuisine occupy an even higher level of in- 
dependence and personal work ; they belong actually to that tiny aristoc- 
racy of people still privileged by fate to exercise in connection with their 
daily work the finest human faculty — creativeness. They are thus still 
permitted to share, in a feeble, human way, in the great divine process 
of personal creation whose eternal source is God himself.* 



* Most large factories have an infinitesimally small aristocracy of privileged men who 
are still allowed to work with their phantasy and their intellect like the designers of 
engines or automobile bodies. There is a slightly larger gentry of toolmakers and man- 
agers. The middle class layer of white-collar workers and salesman can boast of little 
creative opportunity while the large mass of "proletarians" see truly in the propagation 
of the race — and not in their daily monotonous service to machinery — their only 
(though steadily shrinking) creative activity. 



THE BOURGEOIS AND CAPITALISM 65 

The large masses of white-collar workers occupy themselves almost 
exclusively with paper. Gold vanishes, the merchandise remains out of 
sight, trains are codified in timetables, countries are transformed into 
maps, human lives are transfigured into biographies, trade as well as 
morality is represented by statistics and numbers. Thus we arrive at 
our present-day urban civilization which is nothing but an agglomeration 
of files, checks, letters of credit, books of law, receipts, affidavits, stamps, 
balance sheets, and mortgage deeds. And this mountain of paper in turn 
is served by clerks, accountants, lawyers, civil servants, magistrates, 
diplomats, stenotypists, brokers, cashiers, and notaries. Today we already 
know of employees in the big naphtha-syndicates who never so much as 
saw a gallon of crude oil, who never dipped their fingers into that soft, 
sweetish-smelling product of Mother Earth; we have also men in the 
great agricultural companies who would not know the difference between 
a rye field and a wheat field. The expression dSracine is only too adequate 
for the urban middle class. 

The painter makes room for the photographer, the stage director for 
the film producer. Everything is imitation and multiplication. A phantom- 
like, colorless, two-dimensional picture of Greta Garbo is seen in 300 
editions over five continents on the same evening; a single human voice 
resounds from millions of radio sets, and another one, chained to a black 
rubber record, is forced out of thousands of gramophones. It is always 
quantity and not quality to which importance is attached, and there is 
the desperate tendency to make everything available to everybody. No- 
body should have the right to pride himself on being the sole possessor of 
a specific thing. "Democracy" in its first stages is intrinsically a struggle 
against privileges and later democratism continues this bitter, deperson- 
alizing struggle against everybody and anybody with the help of the 
demoniacal magic of technique. One single female being can rouse the 
yearnings of millions of men, smiling at them from 5000 screens, "be- 
longing" to them all, and the car, designed by a small group of engi- 
neers and built by thousands of workers, spreads over all the world in 
millions of identical copies. Everything for everybody! This clearly 
shows that the demands of communism (or rather "commonism") can 
already be found in its nuclear form in ochlocratic technicism. 

With the decline of the influence of monks, peasants, aristocrats, and 
craftsmen the mystic gown of Europe falls and the bourgeois civilization 
of "common sense" and "sober-mindedness" begins its sinister triumph. 



66 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

A great outcry for general and public education can be heard and instead 
of sticking to the hierarchic principle in the most aristocratic of all 
domains — intellectual education — a whole corollary of compromises 
with the mass spirit were made in this field; education became thus 
finally nothing but another factor of leveling applanation side by side 
with industrialism. Ochlocracy needs (as we shall see later on) a most 
mediocre general education adjusted to the majority of intellectual ca- 
pacities ; an ochlocratic education should be just intensive enough to turn 
man into a civilized creature without giving him any special values or 
sublimate him into a bearer of culture. It is necessary that the citizens 
are intelligent enough to understand the constitution of their country; 
they must look up to it in awe and respect. A strong spirit of analytical 
criticism in a thorough ochlocracy might finally endanger the very exist- 
ence of this written basic document through a series of amendments or 
plebiscites. Subjects on the other side can indulge in an extreme criticism 
which after all hardly affects the state of affairs of an absolute or a 
patriarchal monarchy. This is also the reason that there were numerous 
professors in Austrian state universities under Francis Joseph or in 
Spanish state-universities under Alphons XIII who from every possible 
point of view opposed the existing order violently. 

It shall be borne in mind that ochlocratic control was fairly strong 
in the European universities of the nineteenth century ; while ochlocracy 
made a special point of eliminating illiterates, they put their clercs into 
the universities which rapidly lost their former influence. The original 
thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, whether fallacious or 
not in their doctrines, rarely were university professors ; neither Nietzsche 
nor de Tocqueville, Schopenhauer, Bernhart, Spengler or Hello, Kierke- 
gaard, von Hiigel or de Maistre were ever honored with a chair, and Kant 
had to be content with a teaching position in a girls' high school. 

Yet the true pillars of democratism and socialism we find in the 
elementary school and in its semieducated teachers inclining frequently 
toward Marxian socialism. 49 Even in France, where the Academie 
Franchise had become a stronghold of Catholic thought, the mass of 
teachers remains in the clutches of the fin-de-siecle. It is, of course, 
equally true that the function of the teacher in an elementary or sec- 
ondary school is extremely important in an ochlocratic society. We must 
not forget that the extinction of illiteracy remains one of the capital 
tasks of the democratists, because they feel the need of a public which 
masters the three "R's" and is therefore able to mark the right name on 



THE BOURGEOIS AND CAPITALISM 67 

the election papers ; to read cheap novels and pulp magazines, leaflets, 
pamphlets, and advertisements ; the need of a public which solves cross- 
word puzzles, understands warning signs on the road and in the factories, 
and swallows "enlightening" writings without possessing the faculties to 
analyze them critically. It is the specific tragedy of the average urbanite 
to have lost his ancestral, rural gift of wisdom without having even the 
prospect of acquiring a thorough knowledge which is able to replace 
wisdom to a certain extent. 

Another point is the modern type of education which gives precedence 
to the sciences that deal only with means, over philosophy and religion 
that deal with ends. Today the differentiation between these two cate- 
gories is more and more acknowledged and this not only in purely 
Catholic circles. 50 The cognition that most great issues of our time are 
moral and not material is gaining ground and the dawn of the worship 
of exact sciences in the upper intellectual stratas seems to be nearer 
than ever before. 51 

There were few people in Europe or in America who understood this 
issue so clearly as the late Hungarian Minister of Education Count Kuno 
Klebelsberg, who unfortunately died at a relatively early age. Allowed 
a rather moderate budget he was faced with the decision either to 
eliminate the remaining nine per cent of illiterates in his country or to 
create an intellectual as well as spiritual ilite by establishing Hungarian 
colleges in Vienna, Berlin, and Rome. He decided in favor of the latter 
proposal. The Hungarian press attacked him violently but he remained 
firm, very well aware that in our democratistic civilization millions 
learn to read and to write without ever making positive use of 
their knowledge.* 

The superstitious belief that rudimentary knowledge of a few truths 



* It is interesting to note that compulsory education was introduced in most Euro- 
pean states when the liberal tradition was still comparatively strong. It must be said 
in praise of England that education was only made compulsory in the nineties, at a 
time when basically most conservative countries (with less liberal traditions) had al- 
ready yielded to the ochlocratic-terroristic poison. 

Arbitrary compulsory education is after all a flagrant curtailment of parental rights 
and at least as "totalitarian" as conscription. Yet practically nobody dared to contradict 
the sacrifices made to the idol of "education" and few people sensed that compulsory 
elementary education was a great step in the direction of totalitarianism which in time 
intervened in every region of human existence. True, the father's right is not violated 
by compulsory education in so far as a certain degree of education is reasonably deemed 
necessary by the State for citizenship, to be administered in the school of the father's 
choice, provided that school is not subversive in its nature. But the supreme rule is 
that the child belongs to the parent and not to the State. 



68 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

enables the average individual to understand intuitively the major 
problems around us seduced the ochlocrats the world over to spend huge 
sums for mass education. This intellectual optimism of the ochlocrats has 
ended in a spending orgy in educational matters without parallel ; nobody 
after all would be worse off if the whole lot of detective novels, sex 
stories, tepid magazines, spicy reviews, and sport pages remained unread. 
A reading-writing education as such has benefited nobody, has elated 
nobody spiritually or culturally. There is no need to go to the other 
extreme and to believe that the knowledge of the three R's is basically 
destructive, but nothing is more stupid or irrealistic than to judge the 
level of other countries by the number of illiterates. Accepting such 
standards one has to put Latvia higher than France, or the Germanies of 
1890 higher than the German World of 1810. Imperial Russia had a far 
larger percentage of illiterates than the American Middle West yet she 
produced such men as Dostoyevski, Myerezhkovski, Vyereshtshagin, 
Tolstoy, Tshaykovski, Solovyov, Pushkin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Turgenyev, 
Skryabin, Mendeleyev, and Mussorgsky. 

Novelists have already often compared the civilized with the cultured 
man. If we analyze the activities of an illiterate Serbian peasant, of a 
drugstore owner in Cincinnati, and of a delicatessen merchant in Norr- 
koping, it would not be difficult to tell who is civilized and who is 
cultured. The son of an ochlocratic (and Protestant) 52 civilization will 
know more about bookkeeping, engines, cocktails, or national government 
than the native of the Balkans, but he will master no national dances, he 
will hardly be able to play an instrument, he will be unable to improvise 
songs or to invent fairy tales, to paint icons or to carve wooden statues. 
Reading and writing remain, after all, accomplishments which are to serve 
higher purposes. There seems to be ample evidence that the art of 
letters was used in earliest times primarily by priests and only later by 
chroniclers and historians. Men with a positive inner urge for knowl- 
edge, who grew up in so-called backward countries without numerous 
elementary schools, always managed to find ways and means to achieve 
these accomplishments, as we see in the course of history. Yet for the 
true ochlocrat reading and writing, because of the element of applanation 
and despiritualization that is connected with them, is a conditio sine 
qua non. 

The peasant is hated or idolized by the bourgeois; the worker, on 
whom he equally depends is more often venerated than despised (as 



THE BOURGEOIS AND CAPITALISM 69 

Spengler points out in his Hour of Decision), the aristocrat is made a 
semigod or dragged through the filth by the penny press, the priest 
encounters either servility from petty, clerical parties, or volleys of hatred 
from the pulpits of Universities and the rostrum of Parliaments. The 
military of old was specially hated as an agglomeration of proletarians 
in rags and aristocrats, and the episcopal palaces where the sons of 
counts and peasants resided in turns were hardly more popular with 
the half-educated bourgeois. 

It must also be kept in mind that the class most antagonistic to the 
Church has been during the past centuries the middle class, or the 
bourgeoisie.* It is the middle class in France, Austria, Germany, Bohemia, 
and Moravia which shows the greatest percentage of Protestants and it 
is very difficult to believe that it is sheer accident that so few saints 
come from the ranks of bankers, insurance agents, reporters, manufactur- 
ers, and businessmen and so many from the aristocracy, peasantry, army, 
navy, and the proletariat. 53 

Yet there is little doubt that no layer of the population has less 
enthusiasm about itself than the middle class. With the exception of 
the patrician and the bureaucrat, the bourgeois is singularly centrifugal 
toward his own social stratum. 54 On account of his "encircled" position 
between the different layers of society, and because he has to stand a 
strong pressure from at least two fronts, he is constantly losing members 
of his class.** The great inner dissatisfaction which Modern Man feels 
about himself can be partially led back to the intrinsic failure of 
bourgeois civilization and this disillusionment caused a gradual lowering 
of the magnetism of the middle class as a unit. The self-analytical spirit 
of the bourgeois has laid bare the soul of his group and this Great 
Nakedness brought forward the end of the bourgeois mystery and the 
bourgeois myth. 

The personal mystery of medieval man has been largely destroyed by 



* A pertinent article on this subject had been written by Erik v. Kuehnelt-Leddihn 
in Colosseum (June, 1935) under the title: "Catholicism and the Bourgeois." 

** The official and full name of the National-Socialist Party in Germany is National- 
sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei — National Socialist German Workers Party . . . 
all that in spite of its typical bourgeois structure and following. Yet in the word 
Arbeiterpartei was a good deal of the magnetism which carried this party from victory 
to victory. People were simply tired and disgusted to belong to the middle class. In the 
public meetings the men are usually still addressed: Arbeiter der Stirne und der Faust — 
"Workers of the forehead and the fist" (white-collar and manual workers). There seem 
to be few poetical aspects connected with the middle class. It must not be forgotten that 
the red flag of the National Socialists is nothing but another concession to the morbid 
fancies of the bourgeois who aspires to be a "simple proletarian." 



70 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

capitalistic technicism and bourgeois scientism. There was always some- 
thing mystical in personal creation as well as a "secret" in manual, 
artistic skills; convents and monasteries jealously kept the secret of 
their liquors ; craftsmen had their secrets and so had doctors, alchemists, 
astrologers, and pharmacists in their more or less dark trades. Mystics, 
hermits, midwives, cooks, and violin builders harbored their secrets. 
Nature was full of unpenetrable mysteries and strange events; the 
scarcity of written documents furthered the growth of sagas, folklore, 
and legends. But not only man, nature, and life had their mysteries; 
even today we speak of the mysteries of the Rosary, of the Mass. In 
the Armenian Rite of the Catholic Church a veil is spread between 
the altar and audience during the Consecration of the Host. These 
mysteries on the other hand, personal as they might be, were far from 
creating walls between human beings who were by them not less 
magnetically attracted than by distance. Bodies are mutually attracted 
by nearness, knowledge, and pleasure but souls by distance, mystery, 
and suffering. 

Democratism has always been hostile toward mysteries, and in its 
technical as well as personal definition it is based entirely on "publicity." 
The wonderful, great distances are made cheap in relation to time, 
money, and effort; liners, planes, and sightseeing buses explore them 
pitilessly. The reporters, these retrievers of the press, have their noses 
wherever anything dark, unexplained, or unknown is left ; professors cut 
up animals, human beings, plants, and minerals into microscopic slices; 
nudism spreads, telescopes pierce the sky, X rays lay open our insides, 
magazines of popular science inundate the countryside, and writers as 
well as psychiatrists specialize in "souls." Along comes the Salvation 
Army, Moral Rearmament, and "Domestic Courts" on the radio with 
public confessions; autobiographies fill the bookstores, films for sexual 
enlightenment show the act of birth — everything should be known to 
everybody. In the end everybody really does know something about 
everything, but this half-knowledge is neither wisdom nor knowledge. 
It has only an inflating effect, like undigested bread, and gives pains 
in the stomach. It makes people vain, irreverent, and self-content. 

One might add that bourgeois civilization also has its "secrets," but 
these tnysteres bourgeoises seem to be detached from quality, they are 
entirely subordinated to the principle of quantity. This mystery of size 
and number is not mystical but magical, not angelic but demoniacal. 
We have to remember the first Great City and its citizens — Babylon 



THE BOURGEOIS AND CAPITALISM 71 

and its horrible tower, this dreadful pagan attempt to penetrate the 
Secret of God with the help of accumulated material.* On the other side 
of this civilization we see paper. Its essence is quantitative agglomeration 
and paper ghostliness and in its geocentric fatality it has no other 
ultimate goal but to dominate the masses, to bind them, to suspend their 
judgment, to hold them, to charm, to depersonalize, to mystify them. 
Instead of mysteries we have mystagogy. Instead of the substance, the 
long, menacing shadows provided by the last rays of a setting sun. 



* It shall be remembered that the first to be mentioned in the Sacred Scriptures as a 
builder of cities was at the same time the first murderer — Cain. (Gen. 4:17.) 



IV 

OCHLOCRATIC CULTURE 



"There are only three respectable human beings: the priest, the 
■warrior, and the poet. To know, to kill, to create." — Baudelaire. 

Before we proceed in our general analysis we must remember that the 
great medieval homogeneity of the three decisive ideals — the ideal man 
from the separate points of view of either Church, State, or Society — 
has been almost irretrievably lost. The saint, the good citizen, and the 
hero could be represented by one and the same person ; the laws, pre- 
cepts, recommendation and tastes of Church, state, and society very 
seldom contradicted each other and their present antithesis is only a 
further sign of the atomization and inner decay of our modern life. 
St. Louis was not only an ornament of the Church, but also the first and 
best Frenchman and a hero on the battlefield. Saints were "popular," 
citizens fulfilled religiously their political duties, heroes prayed. But the 
ideals of Church, state, and society have ceased to be identical today and 
the "gentleman" (the modern social ideal), the saint and the good citizen 
have lost every trace of synonymity. Neither the pagan state nor the 
pagan society would protest against a man having twenty mistresses; 
neither Church nor society would anathematize a modest gambler; the 
Church would indict a grownup as well as a child for disrespect for his 
or her parents, but the state mindful of the legal twenty-one year limit 
would only condemn the latter while society nowadays would take little 
interest in such a recurrent phenomenon. Human activities thus receive 
a totally different judgment from these three agents; one can remain a 
"gentleman" while paying an unjust wage (by Church standards clearly 
a "sin crying to heaven for vengeance" which is put on the same level as 
murder and sodomy). 

The divergence between these attitudes toward man in his categories 
of existence creates actually a deep unrest in western society. National 

72 



OCHLOCRATIC CULTURE 73 

socialism as well as communism have desperately but not honestly striven 
to solve this cardinal problem by eliminating the Church ideal completely 
and amalgamating the good citizen with the hero into a single unit. It is 
interesting to see that they make a perverted use of the innate thirst for 
sanctity by permitting certain traits of the saints (certainly not the 
supernatural or ecclesiastical ones) to reappear in their dreary, new 
synthesis. The young Communist or young National Socialist is ascetic, 
yet his asceticism is offered up to entirely worldly purposes. And in the 
case of war (one of the deeper, psychological reasons for Nazi and Soviet 
militarism) he has at last an occasion to manifest his qualities of a 
secular sanctity which are so apt to be displayed in umbra mortis. Thus 
we may be tempted to see in the modern totalitarian establishments a 
synthesis of all the three elements provided we are willing to consider 
their concept of sanctity to be an Ersatz, or a travesty of the living orig- 
inal. Communist and National Socialist tyranny is thus partially also due 
to the pressure which must be exerted in order to weld these two (or 
three) concepts together. What we witness east of the Rhine is not an 
organic reconstruction but an enforced "reaction," a brutal effort to 
re-establish a harmonious past by force and terror. The French Revolu- 
tion, the great overture of continental "democracy," had been engaged in 
a similar effort. 

The radio seems to be the last word in the possibilities of a uniformistic 
appeal, but it was the uniform, the military uniform closely followed by 
the civil uniform, that marked the beginning of the bourgeois age. In the 
nineteenth century we see the "gentleman" making his bow to the bour- 
geois, herdist ideas in sartorial matters — the dinner jacket, and tails, 
and other dull formal suits confirm this fact. Neither was the new uni- 
formity restricted to male apparel. This new tendency was in essence 
totalitarian and encroached upon all human matters. 

The gentleman of the nineteenth century had broken, once Victorian- 
ism loomed on the horizon, with the wild and liberalistic vagaries of his 
forefathers. His background was frequently middle class and in England 
it was the influence of the Low Church which molded his type. He was 
deadly afraid to be different. On the Continent it was compulsory mili- 
tary service and in England the public school which fostered the herd 
instinct. To be different was treason and indecency. The religious prin- 
ciples of old were replaced by taboos. The return to primitive society 
had begun. 



74 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

The British public school with its latent suspicion for brilliancy 
and originality is largely responsible for the depersonalization of the 
English upper class. (The Scottish mountain dwellers fared definitely 
better.) The public school had fostered a team spirit and a small herd 
esprit de corps which is neither aristocratic nor of great value to the state 
by its tendency to create reliable mediocrities. One is inclined to like the 
gentleman of a Byronic pattern rather than the one standardized by the 
old school tie, and to prefer an aristocracy with a knightly tradition to 
one crushed in the years of adolescence by a vaguely homoerotic group 
spirit and the industrial idea of "cooperation." 55 Boarding schools, 
preparatory schools, and public schools are far more hostile to the ideals 
of liberty than the much maligned family, and this is the reason why 
these actually play into the hands of democratism. 

It is perfectly true that ochlocrats and democratists of all countries 
emphasize the necessity of "democratic" states to be composed of "free 
men" with the best possible education. This is not only true of our 
American ochlocrat but also of his more radical colleague in Berlin, 
Moscow, and Rome. The clamor for this ideal citizen fills the press, 
radio lectures, and textbooks of America as well as Sweden, Germany, 
and Russia. But the bitter truth is to be found in the fact that modern 
ochlocratic societies are intrinsically urban and that the city dweller is 
practically never free.* Extraordinary people, i.e., those who are "differ- 
ent" and refuse to bow to the furious demand of the masses to become 
"regular," have no place in an identitarian society. Often they have to 
choose nowadays between the concentration camp of the superdemocra- 
cies, the social ostracism of the old-fashioned "democracies" or an eremit- 
ical existence far away from the pulsating regimented life of the great 
social and political centers. 

A hierarchic state or society on the other hand can always find some 
useful job for the outsider (the uncommon man) because everybody is 
expected to differ not less from those whom he serves than from those 
whom he rules. He has to be unique and not "regular." Neither must we 
forget that everybody in the vertical or hierarchic structure is "impor- 
tant" ; everybody serves and rules ; everybody has responsibilities toward 
those under him and duties toward those above him. People in such a 
society not only feel important (as in ochlocracies) but they actually are 
important. Everybody can leave a crowd without much ado but the col- 



* Cf. Ralph Adam Cram's excellently written pamphlet What Is a Free Man? con- 
taining a lecture delivered at the Catholic Rural Life Conference in Richmond, 1937. 



OCHLOCRATIC CULTURE 75 

lapse of a man standing somewhere in a living pyramid of acrobats can 
easily be a catastrophe* 

The ochlocratic state on the other side needs human sheep who become 
party members. We must bear in mind that a two-party system in which 
the parties are not divided by philosophical differences is the only meager 
guarantee of a survival of political democracy.** The plurality of phil- 
osophical antagonistic parties dug the grave of political democracy in 
Germany, France, Austria, Spain, and Italy. In order to save and preserve 
the uniformity of the political philosophy which not only dominates the 
intellectual scene of a country but also constitutes the common denom- 
inator of the two parties, strong social and educational sanctions are 
necessary; only an open or silent agreement between all the opinion- 
forming agencies (press, radio, school, cinema, publishing, advertising) 
can keep this rigid uniformity. The full cooperation of society, which 
possesses after all the most potent sanctions, is an indispensable pre- 
requisite. Education, in the new totalitarian democracies, must also have 
necessarily a low standard in order to prevent a development of the 
critical faculties of the individual. Traveling abroad, which automatically 
widens the intellectual horizon, evokes comparisons, and stimulates think- 
ing, is discouraged if not actually prohibited. The more old-fashioned 
"democracies" could trust these tasks safely to society which needed 
little organizing effort to carry out their supervision. 

The existence of strong and original personalities are equally a menace 
to ochlocracy and democratism, provided they become active in politics 
or in administration. Usually they cause a good deal of trouble in the 
political parties. Yet even outside the political sphere they are not very 
desirable because they do not belong to the "average." The uneducated 
but wise and shrewd peasant is no less a menace to democratism than the 
truly great thinkers. 56 

On the other side we find also a curious uneasiness toward the true 
intellectual. The British public school dislike for the "clever boy" (the 
"swot") is always awake in most "democracies." While reverence is paid 
to the sciences because they are useful the philosopher is rather looked 
upon as a joke. He ranks almost as low as the theologian. This attitude 



* Modern man is not only depressed by the expectation of his physical death but also 
by the fact that his demise will leave no considerable gap. The death of a worker on 
the assembly line (a "hand") will merely shorten the bread line. ("No man is indis- 
pensable" is a highly ochlocratic slogan.) 

** This opinion is also vigorously and convincingly defended in Harold Laski's Par- 
liamentary Government in England, (New York, 1938.) 



76 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

is thoroughly justified when we bear in mind that the scientist who only- 
deals with means* can hardly become a menace to the ochlocratic "way 
of life" like the philosopher or the theologian who deals with the ends of 
our existence. This attitude is also the reason for the curious perversion 
of values and the efforts to mold our behavior as well as our personal 
philosophy (Weltanschauung) after bio-chemo-physical patterns. The 
mischief of interviewing engineers as authorities on religion, of inventors 
as experts on afterlife, of mechanics on foreign policy, and of doctors on 
the moral justification of euthanasia has clearly the same source. The 
times, on the other hand, when bishops will expound their views on the 
molecular theory in tabloids, and Jesuit provincials write books about 
airplane motors and new ways to make synthetic rubber are still far 
ahead. (And this despite the ochlocratic reverence for lay opinion.) 

But the fact remains that democrats are suspicious of the abstract 
thinker, and that they prefer their nations to be led by businessmen and 
engineers. The United States only once had a professor in the White 
House and this experiment ended with disaster. It must be admitted 
though that these prejudices are well founded. The high educational 
standards of continental Europe created an intellectual aristocracy, and 
aristoi are always by nature proud. After having passed through the most 
rigid examinations this highly selective small group refused, whatever its 
social origins may have been, to be put on the same level with the rest of 
the population. Differentiation remained as pronounced as in the feudal 
age. Yet there was even another, more dangerous element in that educa- 
tional system than mere differentiation and selection. The classical and 
humanistic training of the Lycee and the Gymnasium with their severe 
standards** kept the philosophical element in the political parties alive. 



* Papers affirming the existence of a hierarchy in relation to science, philosophy, and 
religion were read by M. Jacques Maritain and Dr. Mortimer Adler at the "Conference 
on Science, Philosophy, and Religion" in New York City, September, 1940. Both phi- 
losophers affirmed that science deals only with means while philosophy and religion 
with the ends. Philosophy is therefore superior to science while religion as a divinely 
revealed knowledge is superior to philosophy. The reaction amongst the scientists and 
some philosophers present at the lecture was as one could expect; as high priests of a 
secularized century they saw in these affirmations a direct challenge against their gen- 
erally recognized status. 

** These highly selective schools last seven to nine years and follow immediately the 
fourth or fifth grade of the elementary school. They admit only a tiny fraction of the 
boys after the age of ten and require an entrance examination which ends frequently in 
the turning down of as many as seventy-five per cent of all candidates. Of all those 
pupils entering the school as many as eighty per cent are often eliminated during the 
laborious years. 

These schools incorporate the equivalent of American upper grades of elementary 



OCHLOCRATIC CULTURE 77 

This extensive and intensive and nevertheless, in every sense of the word, 
"liberal" education fostered a plurality of philosophies which in turn 
made a plurality of parties necessary. These parties were divided by 
ideological abysses which could not be overbridged. Once the two-party 
system became obsolete on account of the plurality of opinions the result 
was a "House divided against itself" by metaphysical oppositions. These 
conflicts could only be ended by the artificial silence imposed through 
the firing squad or the concentration camp. The abysses dividing the 
philosophical parties could not be spanned — least of all in countries 
without the ochlocratic-protestant tradition of compromise ; their dogmas 
made them mutually exclusive. Thus we should not be in the least sur- 
prised to see "democracies" dying a form of death which was considered 
since the days of Plato and Aristotle to be the natural form of their 
demise — their transition into tyranny, the absolute rule of a former 
party leader. 

It must be recalled in this connection that the liberal Rousseauan 
spirit pervading the more old-fashioned democratism was instrumental 
in dispelling the fear from such a ghastly and undignified end ; it was 
repeatedly emphasized that no establishment based on force was able to 
last. Liberal optimism, conceiving man as a courageous being without 
original sin endowed with an inordinate thirst for liberty and justice, 
showed little interest for our megalopolitan straphanger and viewed 
humanity predominantly as an agglomeration of bons sauvages. Yet the 
white race consists largely not of human beings but of employees. Facing 
the choice of cash or liberty they will always choose the former because 
it spells safety. 

The idea that justice always triumphs and that "Truth can take care 
of itself" 57 is very consoling but highly unrealistic. 58 "The blood of 
martyrs is the seed of Christians" is a quite different proposition. The 
Catholic believes that not only does martyrdom draw down God's 
graces, but that the martyr or the saint can himself intercede in heaven 

schools, high school, and college. The B.A. or B.S. is given at the age of eighteen or 
nineteen after a leaving examination. This certificate enables the young man (or girl) to 
go to a university. Universities on the European Continent are always graduate schools. 
The standards of these gymnasia and lycees are very rigorous. Bad spelling after the 
fourteenth year of age would be disastrous. Spelling bees between universities are 
naturally unheard of. Yet the idea to make childhood and adolescence a hard time is 
basically sound. There is no day more beautiful in the European life than the last one 
in "school." Life can offer no more horrors after the grim battles of the examinations. 
And it is reasonable that one begins life by eating the soup and terminates it with the 
sweets — not the other way round. 



78 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

for his Church. On the other hand it is difficult for us to imagine a de- 
ceased Republican intervening for the primary elections in Nassau 
County. 

If now we turn our attention again toward the age-old problem of 
liberty, great care must be taken in order not to confuse the different 
aspects and issues. Liberty can be menaced from the outside as well as 
from the "inside" of the individual person. An inward menace of the 
exercise of free will is for instance madness or psychological inhibitions. 
Outward elements which may be instrumental in the suppression of 
human liberty are the state, society, the organization of labor, etc. The 
problem of external liberty must clearly be viewed from the angle of his- 
torical record and mechanistic probability. Every society, every state, 
every organization imposes limitations on the individual and the question 
is merely where to find the greatest and the least of the freedom-suppress- 
ing efforts and effects. 

There is clearly always a deeper connection between society and state. 
The latter usually mirrors the mind and the inclinations of the former, 
but there is always the possibility of change. Society may undergo a 
development which alienates it from its own political institutions, which 
then subjectively or objectively become "obsolete." A small, determined 
minority sometimes "conquers" the state machinery and "re-educates" 
society, molding it through the agencies of a new state into a new society. 
Such a process may become extremely painful. It is usually connected 
with a total loss of liberties. 

England, for instance, has a society which is originally liberty loving 
and aristocratic. But the terrific identitarianism of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, fostered locally by the rise of a nonconformist bourgeoisie, has 
affected English society sufficiently to rob it of the elasticity and the 
freedom it possessed in the eighteenth century. We have mentioned the 
public schools before. They became bourgeois in spirit about one hundred 
years ago. Yet the eighteenth century was deeply liberal and the brutal 
persecution of Catholics and Jacobites was due to the preconceived idea 
that Catholicism and absolutism are related evils, intrinsically connected 
with a basic dislike for freedom. But the rise of the middle class created 
an atmosphere which drove many unusual people from the British Isles 
and thus we see in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries on the shores 
of Lake Geneva, in Florence, on the Cote d'Azure, in Paris, Baden-Baden, 
Capri, and in the other high spots along the beaten track not only fugi- 



OCHLOCRATIC CULTURE 79 

tives from the Russian autocracy like Bakunin, Kropotkin, Herzen, 
Trotzki, Tshaadayev, and Gorki, but also a long list of voluntarily in- 
voluntarily exiled Englishmen like Oscar Wilde, D. H. Lawrence, Shelley, 
Byron, Beardsley. 59 The decrease of social liberty was not so spectacular 
in England as in many parts of the United States, but we must not forget 
that the Englishman is extremely sensitive (and mainly so to public 
judgment) . 

The control of society over the individual can be more perfect and 
efficient than that of many a secret police organization east of the Rhine. 
In England we have more or less the "control" of society,* in imperial 
Russia we had the control of the state. Provided that the Germanies can 
really produce a National Socialist and the Russians a Bolshevik society 
— and we have to face the possibility that both might ultimately 
succeed — then life in these countries must become more intolerable than 
it is at present. Japan, for instance, was most successful in combining the 
totalitarian supervision of the police with the totalitarian supervision of 
society as well as of organized religion. Enforced idealism is always fate- 
ful and homogeneity must grow organically. A society sanctioning whole- 
heartedly all state laws is a questionable asset from a libertinarian point 
of view. Such a society has frequently the inclination to practice the 
most "democratic" form of rendering justice and that is lynching. 

This sort of punishment is after all based upon direct ochlocratic con- 
sent within definite groups or sections. It must be most inspiring for a 
true "democrat" to see "We, the people" taking the law in its own hands 
and thus dispensing with a judge who might disregard the most sacred 
declaration of mankind, the "voice of the people." The victory of the 
numbers under these circumstances is complete; no pleading is possible 
because it is also superfluous. It would be very "undemocratic" if the rea- 
soning or the appeals of a single human being (in this case the victim) 
could override the general will which in its inscrutable wisdom has al- 
ready decided to roast a Negro slowly to death with blowtorches applied 
to the most intimate parts of his body. 

Treitschke did not exaggerate very much when he stated about seventy 
years ago that the total amount of liberties was probably greater in 



♦The English language has the richest variety of expressions to cover the judgment 
of public opinion and circumscribe the different taboos. These cautious understatements 
have all behind their facade of terse primness a menacing undertone. 

Yet every pressure incites rebellion. There are few countries with more eccentrics than 
England. Yet the English eccentric (unlike his Russian confrere) is usually asocial. 



80 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

Prussia than in Switzerland. Neither would it be an overstatement to 
affirm that a shepherd in the absolute monarchy of King Zog ten years 
ago enjoyed a freer life than one of those miserable straphangers work- 
ing in a Wall-Street law firm. 

There is no modern democratism without a city civilization.* We have 
already mentioned the fact that the illusion of progress is the driving 
motor of modern democratism, but "progress" becomes only evident in a 
megalopolitan civilization.** Countries with few cities and a rustic un- 
commercial culture are relatively immune from democratism. The non- 
Protestant countries of eastern Europe are almost exclusively agrarian. 
One finds there tendencies toward agrarian socialism, yet the ideas of 
the "Green International" (or what the Hungarians call the csizmds 
diktatura — peasant-boot dictatorship) are not democratic. The Mediter- 
ranean countries, too, show little inclination to embrace modern, ochlo- 
cratic ideas. There are, of course, smaller and medium-sized cities in the 
Mediterranean area, but they seldom have a technical megalopolitan 
character (with the exception of Catalonia) and they have preserved the 
hierarchical structure of bygone times ; their population is only in the 
process of becoming a shifting mob. These cities are frequently still dom- 
inated by a Church, a castle, or a monastery — both in the architectural 
as well as in the psychological sense. The Norwegian village is seldom an 
agrarian unit ; it is usually only a harbor and fishing center. On account 
of the large seagoing population it is considerably deracine.** 



* See the criticism of the commercial city by St. Thomas Aquinas in his De Regimine 
Principum, II, 3. 

** Switzerland, for instance, is in spite of her alpine background a typical polis state 
or rather an agglomeration of polis states. Most of the "cantons" bear the name of their 
most important city, and they are often nothing else but the economic Lebensraum of 
their capital. The exceptions are the southern large cantons like Vaud, Grisons, Valais, 
Ticino. 

** The genuine seaman is frequently a vagrant proletarian. It is nevertheless difficult to 
place him in a social category. He lives certainly under extraordinary circumstances and 
the psychological and physical conditions of his existence are very problematic. 

The severe discipline creates usually a radically leftish political tendency among the 
lower strata of the seagoing population in Europe while the upper layers indulge in 
a sort of rightism which is frequently nothing else but dark reaction. 

The navy and the merchant marine have always played an important part in "red" 
revolutions; one has to remember the Russian fleet in 190S ("Knyaz Patyomkin"), 1917 
and 1921, the Austrian navy in 1917, the German Navy in 1918, the Spanish navy in 
1936. Not only Portugal, the Netherlands, and Greece but even England had certain 
difficulties with their navies in the past twenty years. The only group in England seriously 
affected by the French Revolution was the Navy which staged large-scale mutinies at 
Spithead and at the Nore. Sailors and officers from the Navy are often the most brutal 
elements in political upheavals. 



OCHLOCRATIC CULTURE 81 

The village unity is still of the natural order. The common affairs are 
regulated in a sentiment of mutual interdependence, and no artificial 
clubs or leagues are necessary to strengthen the social ties; the bio- 
logical relationship of the villagers makes them feel like a large family 
with branches of different importance and precedence. In the small Amer- 
ican town, with its six to seven hundred inhabitants, which has prac- 
tically sprung into existence overnight, the inhabitants do not know 
each other, as they come from various parts of the country and fre- 
quently even from European states. There is no blood relationship. The 
families have no common history or historical memories with the town 
itself ; and this lack of organic connection is in itself a conditioning basis 
of ochlocratic mentality which has a natural affinity toward everything 
artificial, atomistic, and impersonal. 60 

The stranger is always welcome in the city, and swift growth always 
tickles the vanity of a city. Posters exclaiming: "Watch Mechanicsville 
grow ! " are remindful of this fact. The worship of size and number is an 
old ochlocratic as well as materialistic trend as opposed to the Christian 
traditional love for quality. 61 It is "bigger and better" and not "better 
and bigger" which inspires our democratists with their competitive and 
recordistic tendencies. 

The stranger in the big, progressive, 62 and growing city is in the light 
of statistics even a necessity; in three or four generations the large city 
dies out completely. This unorganic accumulation of "immigrants" with- 
out common ties is unable to continue the political discussions of the 
village pub ; a soulless megalopolitan bureaucracy which permits only an 
indirect and anonymous influence of the populace on their activities 
steps into the place of the old order. The complicated technological struc- 
ture of the modern city demands an endless number of laws, regulations, 
restrictions, and controls which often cut deeply into the private life of 
the individual. Policemen have to regulate the traffic; the health service 
has to supervise factories, bakeries, and the welfare institutions. All these 
registration and immatriculation offices, the complicated machinery of 
finance which finds its practical expression in the savings banks, trust 
companies, and exchanges, the tax departments and tax collections, the 
fire regulations, broadcast regulations, driving regulations with their 
"dont's," the police with all their branches and ramifications, the whole 
army of detectives, morality squads, chartered accountants, vehicle 
testers, building, and elevator inspectors — they all constitute a pagoda 
of slavery, of control, of supervision, and regimentation. 



82 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

These controls and checks may be perfectly necessary. Yet they are 
the price we are paying for the illusion of "progress" because the capital- 
istic technological development carries in itself the germ of complete 
anarchy which calls for an even more terrific counterbalance of enforced 
"order." 63 Everybody who had the necessary cash five hundred years ago 
could buy a sword or a spear but today in all "civilized" countries one 
has the most formidable difficulties to get a permit for a revolver. In 
superdemocratic Italy even the carrying of knives with a fixed blade is 
prohibited. England, which is still flying the banner of liberty, makes it a 
bureaucratic adventure to buy bullets for a target rifle, and one of the 
most difficult things to purchase in London are chocolates filled with 
liqueur. Everything is nowadays controlled. Once it was possible to 
mount a buggy and to drive in Europe over land as far as one wanted. 
To accomplish the same feat in peacetime by motorcar it is necessary to 
comply with driving tests, driving licenses, license numbers, motor 
vehicle inspections, compulsory third party risk insurances, speed limits, 
parking prohibitions, triptyques and custom declarations, passports, visas, 
money export permits, gasoline taxes, registration permits, etc.* 

The limitation of our liberty caused by the technological development 
is probably still in its initial stage. H. L. Mencken in a fit of deplorable 
naivete once told us that every invention means the elimination of a 
priest. This can be revised by saying that every new invention calls for 
an additional policeman. What we experience in the realm of government 
control in "progressive" countries is nothing but the first clouds heralding 
a bigger storm. We have all the prospects of a total aerial war with 
bacilli, gas, and high-grade explosives and there is a possibility that man- 
kind may unloose dark powers over which they will finally lose control 
like Goethe's sorcerers' apprentice. Today it is already evident that small 
or agrarian countries are completely dependent on the equilibrium be- 
tween the larger nations. They live in the very shadow of slavery and the 



* The only European country which enforced a speed limit till about ten years ago 
was Switzerland which was literally covered with speed traps. Yet this system was 
abolished when tourists refused to drive their cars over the controlled roads of this 
ancient democracy. 

Coercive laws in the realm of diet were similarly only in force in different "democracies" 
and superdemocracies. The most outstanding countries prohibiting their citizens to imi- 
tate our Lord by drinking wine were the Soviet Union, the United States of America, 
Soviet Hungary, and Finland. Antialcoholic legislation is also strict in Sweden, Norway, 
Ontario, and some American states. It is symptomatic that these prohibitive laws are 
typical only for "democratic," Protestant, or communistic countries. Many Protestant 
countries suffer also from blue laws. The province of Ontario, for instance, has a com- 
bination of Blue Laws and antialcoholic legislation. 



OCHLOCRATIC CULTURE 83 

ochlocratic law that the numerically larger groups take precedence over 
those numerically weak is now fully applied to them. 

When the decline of our total liberties is mentioned one frequently hears 
the counterargument voiced that the Middle Ages were characterized by 
the institution of serfdom, an institution by no means as universal as the 
layman is wont to believe. Yet the essence of the legal relationship be- 
tween the serf and his overlord consisted in the fact that the former was 
tied to a soil which enjoyed "protection" from the latter. For this protec- 
tion the serf was forced to work one, two, or sometimes even three days 
a week for the knightly racketeer. Negligence or unwillingness to work 
could be punished by a score of fines or castigations, yet it was impossible 
to turn the serf from his land. He could neither be "fired" nor dispos- 
sessed. Modern man in the city is from that point of view even worse off 
than the serf. In eighty out of a hundred cases he does not own a home 
but lives in literal serfdom. Provided he earns four checks of fifty dollars 
each in a month he can retain three of those, but the fourth he has to turn 
in to his landlord. That means — to all practical purposes — that the 
individual tenant works one and a half days each week for the landlord. 
His refusal to do so would end more disastrously than the ancient serf's 
because he would be turned out from his home and his meager possessions 
be removed to the street. Thus to talk about modern freedom is mere 
cant when we exalt it in juxtaposition to medieval freedom. 

Yet there is still another tyrannical aspect of technicism and pro- 
gressivism, one even more oppressive and psychologically more subtle. 
Ernst Jiinger hinted at it in Der Arbeiter* This other menace lies in the 
fact that man is made more and more dependent, more and more 
"vulnerable" and helpless in emergencies, thanks to the collective, 
summary, and synthetic, and communitarian character of our technical 
institutions. There is no doubt that a peasant dependent on a tractor 
(i.e., on engineers, factories, mechanics, oil fields overseas, refineries, 
rubber plants, etc.), is less "free" than another one using a horse-drawn 
plough. Every electrical installation, communal sewer, and gas pipe 
involves a decrease of independence. The specialization of knowledge 
makes the very conception of life outside of well-organized and up-to-date 
communities for modern man, spoiled by the gadgets and amenities of 
"progress," unattractive. It would be sheer hypocrisy if we would deny 
that for us the idea of living beyond the reach of a dentist is almost 



* Hamburg, 1932, p. 160. 



84 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

terrifying. There is no doubt that skills have always a liberating effect, 
but knowledge, contrary to general belief, does not always make men 
free. Psychologically it has frequently a depressing and enslaving effect. 
An ignorant savage facing an attack of appendicitis in a jungle feels 
"freer" than an explorer under the same circumstances (because the 
latter interprets the symptoms correctly — but his knowledge only makes 
him in his helplessness certain of his doom). And in spite of our ridiculous 
pride in the finely woven net of urban and progressive dependencies 
(dainty meshes which enslave us completely) we have retained full 
admiration of the truly independent man, of Robinson Crusoe. The 
debacle of civilizations is frequently due to mechanical destructions and 
disruptions of the communitarian machineries by external or internal 
forces. If man, at the time of such a minor catastrophe, has already been 
reduced to the status of a pure animal sociale, lacking all forms of 
independent existence, then the damage may be so great, and appear to 
all concerned so irreparable, that all hopes, all will for resistance and 
recuperation, yield to blank despair and lead thus to complete 
disintegration. 

Crime also profits largely by new technical inventions. One can say 
without exaggeration that almost every new technical invention harbors 
the potentiality of the most demoniacal misuse. We have to ask ourselves 
honestly whether the invention of the Wright brothers — made in best 
faith — will not bring much more sorrow than joy to mankind before 
this present war is over. The answer is obvious. Orville Wright was 
convinced that the airplane would deal a dashing blow to militarism, 
eliminating the element of surprise in warfare. Instead it made the 
enslavement of numerous countries possible and destroyed the finest 
historical landmarks of London. One feels definitely less sure that a few 
old-fashioned cardinals and higher ecclesiastics who declared in the 
seventeenth century that machinery may be the work of Satan, were 
totally incorrect. Some day we may witness death rays, X-ray eyes, and 
similar inventions enabling civil and political criminals to indulge in 
more nefarious activities than we dare now to dream. 64 Then, of course, 
it will have become evident even to the compilers of college textbooks 
that the great problems of our existence are of a moral and not of 
a technical or medical nature. Today the clearness of this issue is still 
obscured by the drugstore claptrap of "progressivists." 65 

To all these horrors of technicism one must add the scourge of monotony 



OCHLOCRATIC CULTURE 85 

and the tyranny of time. Cities like London, New York, Berlin, Paris, 
Chicago, Pittsburgh, Detroit, or Glasgow are high spots of slavery in 
comparison to Albania, Bulgaria, or even Central Africa. The slavery 
of the watch and clock, the bourgeois, anthropocentric slavery of material 
prestige and successful competition (to slave in order to keep up stand- 
ards), the wage slavery of the proletarian, the school slavery of the 
children, the conscription slavery of the adolescents, the road slavery, 
the factory slavery, the barrack slavery, the party slavery, the office 
slavery, the parlor slavery of manners and conventions — all these 
slaveries make political "freedom" appear a bitter joke. 

The microscopic importance of a single vote has been discussed in 
a previous chapter. But to think logically and clearly in proportion ratios 
can hardly be expected from the desperate gray masses of straphangers 
with their starved personalities craving to attribute a material importance 
however small to their miserable egos.* What else is their life but an 
endless streaming and "commuting," six days out of seven, over the same 
beaten track in trolley cars, railways, subways, "els," taxis, and buses 
from the suburbs to the centers of the cities where the clocks turn their 
hands menacingly, as the galley wardens used to swing and to crack their 
whips in the days of old. The person in these dehumanized beehives is 
entirely subjected to a collective whole, to his work, to machinery, to 
the commercial product, to the process of trade. We have to ask ourselves 
in all candor whether a free Negro in Mozambique has not more 
independence than — let us say — a British tax official or a Dutch white- 
collar worker. The free Negro only works in order to feed and nourish 
his family (and a little more if he wants to). If he prefers he can work 
during the night and sleep during the day. He can interrupt his work 
as often as he likes. He can choose freely between different methods to 
carry out his work. But our progressive white-collar worker has no 
choice. In fact he lives in a trembling fear of dismissal, unemployment, 
disease, and death. "Lack of independence" is written on his face which 



* Every human being is extremely important, thanks to the fact that he has an im- 
mortal soul. "One human thought is more valuable than the whole visible world," says 
San Juan de la Cruz. But the tragedy of modern man lies in his tendency to deny the 
existence of his soul and to try desperately to be "important" in the realm of material 
values. "Success" or "failure" is nowadays frequently measured in these terms. When we 
maintain that "Mr. Smith made good" we hardly imply that we see in him a spiritual 
rival of St. Francis of Assist or St. Vincent de Paul. 

Yet, materially, everybody is sooner or later a failure because death finally terminates 
every career. The great pagan sadness of modern man is largely due to his premonition of 
ultimate disaster. 



86 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

has lost the defiant expression of freedom so typical of the "backward" 
mountain peasant. Whatever he needs he has to buy. He cannot produce 
anything for himself besides money — paper signed by some government. 
He is only a miserable link in a long chain. 

Once Europe could boast of a large class of craftsmen — free people 
with the opportunity for artistic creation; but now everything is manu- 
factured by mass production and the result is an incredible shrinkage in 
the variety of forms due to standardization. There is probably a greater 
variety of goods in Timbuctoo or in the Sooks of Marrakesh than in 
Frankfort or Los Angeles. The artifacts are thus "democratized." (Mr. 
Gray and Mr. Green get an identical product for an identical price.) 
The buyer has also to make a compromise between the actual merchandise 
and his taste, but the "democrat" has the consolation that the idea of 
compromise is very democratical. Finally we see under the impact of 
the countless compromises a degeneration of taste and the various 
industries make desperate efforts to standardize taste in order to produce 
more cheaply; people buy only "nationally advertised brands" and in 
the end we have the mass taste or rather the mass lack of taste. 

The defenders of mass production emphasize the fact that modern 
manufacture makes more goods accessible to a greater number. They 
are not aware psychologically that the gain is nil. It is true that a book 
used to cost during the Middle Ages the equivalent of two to five hundred 
dollars whereas Gone With the Wind can be bought in editions of $1.49 
and even less. Libraries were the privileges of a very few. But on the 
other side people enjoyed books far more, and the purchase of a book 
was a greater event in life than today the acquisition of a Cadillac. 
Nowadays one walks nonchalantly into a bookstore, pushes two and a 
half dollars over a counter, reads the book and forgets it sometimes in 
the suburban train. 

It is also in the very nature of democratic technology that the person 
endowed with a unique soul and personality ceases to produce something 
alone. The person is replaced by or subordinated to the factory and the 
individual has only the privilege to serve, to help the machinery in its 
activity. 66 Some of the workers have the gift to make themselves 
independent from their manual activities in a psychological sense and 
to become daydreamers, but the huge majority loses all dignity and 
sensibility and vegetates in a complete subservience toward machinery, 
only interrupted from time to time by divertisement which he "enjoys" 
uncritically in a state of semicollapse. 67 



OCHLOCRATIC CULTURE 87 

The decline from the heights of the Middle Ages is evident ; occidental 
man previously dominated by spiritual and ethical conceptions indulged 
in an intellectualism which became more and more sterile and derating ; 
the brain was finally supplanted by the muscle. The fundamental explora- 
tions and inventions have largely been made by now and they multiply 
in geometrical progression. The communistic roots of this scheme are 
obvious; the tendency to have equally educated {or equally uneducated) 
people doing equal manipulations which result in equal articles costing 
the same and looking alike, is insofar intrinsically bolshevistic. The 
ensuing process of applanation is of devastating force. 

Let us now visualize a man in Little Rock, Arkansas, stepping out of 
his car. It would be pretty hard to judge his "character" (his profession) 
from his exterior. He will have one of the myriads of Ford cars, one of 
thousands of ready-made suits, and shoes like most of his fellow citizens. 
Neither the tailor, nor the motor engineer, nor the shoemaker have known 
him personally because they all work for the anonymous mass. The 
decline becomes apparent if we compare clothing styles from the centuries 
before and after the industrial revolution. Yet the same sordid comparison 
can be made between letters and diaries from these periods. Our great- 
grandparents manifested all their personality in the written word while 
modern man in his depersonalized mediocrity prefers to send telegrams 
or nondescript, unorthographic notes dictated to a secretary through a 
phonograph. In the eighteenth century western Europe had about 70 
per cent illiterates and eastern Europe almost 90 per cent, but from the 
bourgeoisie upward everybody was able to express himself (or herself) 
in writing. This alone almost justifies a limited, selective education from 
an ethical as well as from a practical point of view.* Anybody who goes 
to school in order to be able to send telegrams and read the sporting 
news wastes his time and the money of the taxpayers. Mr. Averageman 
will rarely read a book; such an activity by itself would already be 
too personal. He rather sticks to magazines. Books have editions of 
several thousands ; magazines go into millions. Magazines are "broader" ; 
they satisfy the great mass. 

But let us return to Mr. Z, the worthy "prominent" citizen from Little 
Rock. His prominence is largely due to the fact that his bank account 
of five figures dazzles the masses who consider him perhaps also to be 
a "civic leader." He is bald and has a pince-nez. He drives his car around 



* Limited to the apiaroi and not to the wealthy or "wellborn." 



88 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

the city. He may also drive over roads, but to walk for over two hours 
over the pathless prairie would almost kill him. He is a city dweller and 
the car is practically his feet. The homo rusticus, too, has his limitations 
but only in a horizontal sense; he cannot expand indiscriminately in 
this direction. He therefore has to live more in a vertical sense, which 
has a material as well as a spiritual side to it. He can farm his fields 
more intensively, plough deeper, fertilize it, and the effect of his hard 
work goes deep into the soil and rises high above the surface of the earth 
in the form of the stalks of wheat. Beneath him is the soil and above him 
are the rain-bringing clouds, the wind, and the sun and — ■ "way above," 
there is God. Mr. Z has the Greens living above him, the Whites and 
the Blacks. The Jones and the Jenkins live next door. Nobody, on the 
other hand, looks into the windows of the farmer or peasant. 

Yet the Z family is utterly anthropocentric — it is surrounded on all 
sides by other human beings. Mr. Z is independent from the wind, the 
clouds, and the seasons, yet he is dependent upon his boss, his timetable, 
and the social contacts of his wife. Besides he is a man of horizontal 
dimensions. He has no ties to the soil, but rushes over the surface of 
the globe with the help of technical contraptions. 

Two very characteristic representants of the "vertical" and the 
"horizontal" man are the sailor and the mountaineer. The former's 
characteristics have been discussed before. The mountaineer, on the other 
hand, lives not only in a truly vertical world but also in a well-organized, 
noncollective landscape; no group has a stronger personality than his. 
His universe — the valley — is infinitesimally small. So are his villages, 
so his estate. Yet he always loves liberty, and while climbing among 
the rocks he feels that there is nothing between him, the rope, and God. 
He is politically indomitable and he always enjoyed the greatest political 
privileges, as we saw it in the Tyrol, the Caucasus, Montenegro, Tran- 
sylvania, Croatia, Navarre, Daghestan, the Basque provinces, the N.W. 
Frontier of India, Savoy, and Albania. The names of Andreas Hofer, 
Tomas Zumalacarregui, Montrose, Shamyl, Todor Alexandrov of Mace- 
donia, Georgios Kastriota Skanderbeg, Abd-el-Krim, Sertorius, Arnold 
Winkelried, and the Montenegrinian leaders will never be forgotten in 
political or military history. The Vatican as well as the Bourbons had 
Swiss guards; the imperial palace in Vienna had a Bosnian watch; 
Albanian and Kurds guarded the Sultan; Rif-Kabyles, General Franco; 
Sikhs, Punjabis and Gurkhas, the viceroy of India. 
It is only natural that democratistic civilization should be horizontal. 



OCHLOCRATIC CULTURE 89 

It is always the city in the modern world which represents the 
expansionist, i.e., "imperialistic" element. The peasant is "local" but the 
commercialized urban middle class with its national herdism, its quantita- 
tivism, and its desire for new markets and resources stands for the 
"bigger and better."* More citizens means more customers. As all modern 
wars since the French Revolution have to be "holy wars" on account of 
their mass characters the cities with their vague emotionalism and 
materialism have become the very cradles of industrialized warfare. 68 

Modern, urban man thinks in different "categories" than the tradi- 
tional (rural) man. The "streamlined" inhabitant of the United States 
will first of all be an "American" and at second thought a citizen of 
the United States. The European "liberal" was similarly a European first, 
then a German, etc. The Nazi "begins" at the second category — and ends 
there denying hotly differences between the individual German states or 
tribes. Medieval man, on the other hand, was first of all the member or 
head of a family which (in some cases) like a state had its flag and arms. 
Then he was the dweller of a village or city. (St. Moritz in the Grisons, 
for instance.) The following step was that he lived in the Upper Engadine 
and only in the next category of self-cognizance was he conscious of being 
a Grisonian. To think of himself as a Swiss was almost a mythical after- 
thought, as of belonging to a subcontinental unit. 

It is not only the improvement of transportation which changed this 
outlook. Human beings are weary of being "persons" {per se). They feel 
weak, helpless, and crushed. They have given up the effort to have their 
personal identity; and in order to safeguard their existence they seek 
forgetfulness and depersonalization in the largest possible collective unit. 

The mass products of modern technicism, the hostility toward any 
sort of hierarchy, the arithmetic attitude toward elections, uniformism, 
and technicism — all these things will not permit the product of a 
democratistic civilization to accept a vertical point of view. This urban 
horizontalism also explains to us partly the pantheistic, deistic, and 
atheistic tendencies in our ochlocratic world. The horizontalist is tied 
down and cannot rise above himself. In his antagonism toward all 
hierarchy he even finally opposes the idea of God as a superior to him- 
self, as a Supreme Being, and therefore also the conceptual images of 



* I like to emphasize here again that environment is not fate nor (theologically speak- 
ing) excuse. Even religiousness or irreligiosity does not necessarily condition moral 
goodness or badness. The knowing about God is a great help and a great advantage but 
it involves also greater obligations and duties. 



90 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

Popes, emperors, kings, and fathers. The mountaineer is usually more 
pious than the mercantile seafarer, the trader, or the circus acrobat, and 
there is nothing surprising in the fact that alpinism has largely been 
inaugurated by priests and enterprising Englishmen of devout convictions. 

It must be borne in mind that democratism and leftism in Europe have 
two distinct branches, one in Catholic countries and one in Protestant 
countries. This is the reason why communistic tendencies in the 
Protestant world are a direct outcome of mammonistic democratism with 
the background of a terrorizing society, while in Catholic and schismatic 
countries they are largely a reaction of anarchical liberalism. In the 
latter countries they smack often of undiluted and undisguised satanism. 
In Russia they may also be a reaction against the Manichaean tradition 
of the Eastern Church.* The frequency of parlor pinks in the large 
democratic domains of the Protestant world indicates the origins of 
communism from an ultramammonistic and ultramaterialistic mentality. 69 

This is also no doubt the reason why socialism and the more violent 
forms of ochlocracy and superdemocracy — Fascism — have to blaze 
their trails into the Catholic world by revolts, revolutions, and 
assassinations. The deep antagonism between "backward" Catholicism 
and these new "progressive" philosophies make a compromise impossible. 

This can be easily illustrated and demonstrated by the manifold 
examples of revolutionary socialism in Spain and Portugal, from the so- 
called "Communists" of Andalusia and Catalonia in 1835 to the FAI, 
CGT, UGT, and POUM, the revolutionary socialism of Italy which 
reached its zenith in 1921, the revolutionary social democracy of Vienna 
with its two risings in 1927 and 1934, the sanguinary revolutions in 
Budapest (1919), in Munich (1919 and 1923), Paris (1792, 1830, 1848, 
1871, 1934), and Baden (1848). We also find strongly revolutionary 
forms of socialism in the domains of the Eastern Church (Russia, 
Rumania, Bulgaria, Greek Macedonia, and Thrace) as well as in 
Catholic Poland and Lithuania. In the Protestant countries on the other 
side we find socialism usually tame, bourgeois, and parlor pinkish. Only 
Berlin and Hamburg knew, apart from the central German industrial 
area, the meaning of revolutionary socialism, whereas the tributary parties 
of the II International in Great Britain, the Netherlands, Norway, 
Sweden, Denmark, Latvia, the United States, and Canada were all 



* Erik R. v. Kuehnelt-Leddihn's, Jesuiten, Spiesser, Bolschewiken (German Edition, 
Salzburg, 1933), 53-54. 



OCHLOCRATIC CULTURE 91 

imbued by a nice sedentary bourgeois spirit.* In Catholic Mexico on 
the other hand we see socialism closely connected with violence 
and terror. 70 

If Catholicism would not have an inner abhorrence for revolutionary 
practices one could probably see a long list of Catholic revolutionary 
movements in the Protestant ochlocratic zone. The case of Gil Robles, 
who let the right moment for a decisive blow in Spain pass by, is a 
typical example of Catholic revolutionary inertia. Of course there is 
Guy Fawkes (probably prompted to his deed by Burleigh's agents), the 
Swiss Sonderbundskrieg in 1847, and the Irish revolutionary war against 
England from 1916 till 1921. Yet the list is meager and the Catholics 
can find consolation in the fact that Catholicism is the only conscious 
negation of our ailing and perverted modern world, and therefore (spir- 
itually and intellectually at least) the only revolutionary movement. 
All other political philosophies — Leftist "Democrats," National Social- 
ists, Continental Liberals, Communists, and Technocrats — agree on the 
coming earthly millennium of equality, plumbing, hygiene, and statistical 
increases in the material sphere. Their fight against each other is so bitter 
only because it is in its essence fratricidical. They all believe in a more 
or less identical Utopia yet they differ about the means to achieve it. 
In this respect they resemble the unfortunate masons trying to build the 
Tower of Babel but who failed to achieve their goal because the confusion 
of languages prevented them from mutual understanding and common 
planning; the man who could translate their thoughts would indeed 
be antichrist. 

It is symptomatic that the stronger their disbelief in God, the greater 
their haste and the more accentuated their terroristic methods. While 
the continental liberal, with his deistic tradition and his superstition 
regarding the absolute goodness of human nature, prefers to lie pat 
and to hope for the best, the Communist with his neurotic impatience is 
determined to speed up development by systematic mass murder. His 
attitude is surprising if we remember the Marxian stand about the 
inevitability of the historical process which leads directly to the establish- 
ment of a dictatorship and finally a classless society of the proletariat, 
after which the historical and sociological development comes to a 
miraculous standstill. Yet godless man, shocked and tortured about the 



* It is interesting to note that the Austrian Social Democratic Party used the red flag 
as their party banner, a practice which was genuinely abhorred by their German col- 
leagues who stuck to the colors of the Weimar Republic — black, red, and gold. 



92 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

finality of death cannot wait ; for his own sake he has to accelerate the 
historical process and in order to catch up with the time element he has 
to wade through oceans of blood. Thus Jose Ortega y Gasset's parable 
of the automobile and our mortality lies at the very root of all our 
materialism. 



V 

WOMAN TODAY 



"It is life one loves in woman." — Jacques Chardonne, 
in Aimer c'est plus que V amour. 

It is self-evident that an integral horizon talism and collectivism demands 
a mechanistic identification of man and woman. (This school of thought 
comes finally to the "logical" conclusion that there should be no difference 
between human beings and beasts.) 71 Absolute equality and identification 
of man and woman carried to the extreme has very far-reaching conse- 
quences not only in the realm of politics but also in the sphere of culture 
and biopsychology.™ 

The term "equality" in this connection is used neither in the meta- 
physical nor in the legal sense. We use "equality" here rather with a 
meaning of junctional identity — which may have some connection with 
the legal term but lacks practically every metaphysical aspect. 

This functional identity — the Germans would use the term Gleich- 
setzung — following a large-scale emancipation of women never neces- 
sarily increases the influence of women on culture, civilization, or even 
politics. Owing to the wrong use made of the best female talents, we see 
rather a diminution of feminine influence ensuing from such a process. 
The historical, cultural, or religious role of a Pompadour, Maintenon, 
du Barry, a Catherine II, Elizabeth of England, a Jeanne d'Arc, Cath- 
erine de Medici, Teresa of Avila, Hroswitha, Isabel of Spain, Mary 
Stuart, or Catherine of Siena is known to all of us. Their influence, in- 
dependently of the circumstance where it was of a positive or negative 
nature, was hardly ever matched by women of the ochlocratic or com- 
munistic world in individual cases. Collectively, women now might have 
more influence in Denmark than in Portugal, but our analytical interest 
is centered on woman and not on women. 

Of course there is a competing list. But just as we cannot compare 

93 



94 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

Miss Sylvia Pankhurst with Maria Theresa, it is an equally hopeless 
enterprise to draw the parallel between Comrade Alexandra Kollontay 
and Catherine of Russia (a worthy comparison in one sense at least), 
or between Ellen Key and St. Teresa of Avila. To compare Miss Mar- 
garet Sanger or Miss Mary Stopes with St. Hildegard of Bingen, or Aimee 
Semple MacPherson with Christina of Sweden is almost blasphemy. 

A "high" anonymous average supplanted these extraordinary women 
in the "progressive" Northwest of Europe. Even the history of American 
democratism is written practically without the names of women, and 
there are no new outstanding female leaders in the ranks of the Russian 
Communists. All we have is the fading memory of the old revolutionaries 
— of Dora Kaplan, Vera Figner, Angelika Balabanov, the Krupskaya, 
and Mademoiselle Zassulitch who fired at the Prefect of St. Peters- 
burg with impunity.* These violent female Leftists who lived in the 
shadow of the imperial double-headed eagle are now supplanted by a 
completely anonymous herd of average women.** 

Still it cannot be denied that the influential women organizations the 
world over have a tendency to favor ochlocratic and Leftist ideals. Here 
it must be borne in mind that the great criterion in the old hierarchic 
world was sanctity, intellect, courage, and, perhaps, birth. Nobody ob- 
jected in the fourteenth century to a woman bearing twelve children or 
writing books or achieving sanctity. All true virtues were not less ad- 
mired in women than in men. Women had, therefore, in the Middle 
Ages, contrary to general belief, the fundamental human "careers" open 
to them. Yet ochlocratic society, suspicious of medieval ideals (if not 
openly hostile to them), sees in a human being primarily a citizen, a 
voter, and a contributor to the phantasmagory of progress, i.e., a money- 
maker (and in the political sense a taxpayer). 73 These concepts gave 
rise amongst certain women to that weird craze for "equality" which 
increases in strength the further to the left their ideology stands. The 
ultimate logical conclusion is the desire to share in the levie en masse 
for collective killing in uniforms, and to serve in the army as we have 



* Vera Zassulitch was acquitted by the jury for the attempted assassination of General 
Tryepov. With all its inefficiencies and brutalities Imperial Russia always retained a great 
amount of generosity and social "democracy." Even in matters of criminal jurisdiction 
Russia was far more humane than many West Europeans suspect. Exile (not imprison- 
ment in) to Siberia was not a terrible punishment and the death penalty could only be 
inflicted on persons who had cooperated in the assassination of a member of the 
imperial family. 

** Needless to say that the statistics (even genuine ones) can "prove" that the posi- 
tion of woman is today far stronger than in the days when Dostoyevski and Turgenyev 
described in their novels so many inspiring female heroines. 



WOMAN TODAY 95 

witnessed it in Finland (the Red woman regiment of Tampere, 1917), 
under Kerensky, in the USSR, and in Spain. Yet it is depressing to witness 
the rapid decline of extraordinary achievements of women in Western 
Civilization after their emancipation. 

One very frequently has opportunity to hear an argument in favor of 
identitarianism between the sexes which lacks every sound biological 
basis. This argument runs shortly as follows: "In the early stages of 
mankind it was only physical power which counted. The men were 
therefore in the position to 'enslave' women. Today we are so enlightened 
that we understand this mistake of the dark past. Women given equal 
education and equal opportunity will be equal to men. Yet they cannot 
catch up from one generation to the other. The injustices of thousands 
of years have left their mark on them. It may take a couple of genera- 
tions until they recover completely." 

It is needless to emphasize that this argument lacks also every anthro- 
pological justification. Matriarchal cultures are exceptional but certainly 
not rare amongst primitive races. In most European countries women 
have been admitted during the past one, two, or even three generations 
to universities and yet their record is meager because even if properly 
educated their functional placement in life is usually made on egali- 
tarian principles. Women lack, finally, certain intellectual abilities which 
men frequently possess. This has nothing to do with inheritance. Every 
man has a "clever" father and a "suppressed" mother ; the girls are in 
the same boat and it is totally unscientific to believe in anything like 
"idento-sexual heredity." The chances to inherit under equal circum- 
stances specific traits from either parent are equal for every child of 
either sex. Yet the legend of the female handicap by centuries of sup- 
pression still goes on. 

All this does not imply a female inferiority. But there is a very marked 
difference between man and woman, and that not alone in the physical 
and biological sense. Man is not "superior" to woman but he is primary. 
There are almost no human institutions, inventions, ideas, formations 
which have not a male origin. There are many functions which man and 
woman have in common, there are others still which have greater affin- 
ities with one sex than with the other and, finally, there are things which 
are the exclusive privilege of either man or woman. The reason for the 
decline of female influence is largely to be found in the disregard of 
these proclivities, as we have already said before. This should not be 



96 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

misconstrued in order to support national-socialist views on women. 
The three K's for women — Kuche, Kinder, Kirche (Cooking, Children, 
Church) — are part of the unofficial program of the party. Yet this 
attitude is only seemingly "antidemocratic." It is superdemocratic in 
a chronological sense. 

National socialism, as superdemocracy, is past the illusions of early 
democracy. The Nazis have not shut their eyes to the experience that 
woman is ordinarily inferior to man as an ochlocratic citizen, i.e., as a 
political "animal" and as money-maker. Here her relegation to kitchen 
and nursery is actually a punishment because she did not make good 
as a voter or worker. Women in the Third Reich are in a certain sense 
"in exile." Theoretically they may return when they promise to "make 
good."* In the meantime we must consider the Third Reich to be, in a 
deeper sense, homoerotic. The monolithic state and the monolithic so- 
ciety should consist of only one single sex. A truly Catholic society on the 
other side always relied on thinking, praying, and loving women. 

But the process of assimilation in the democratic and identitarian 
world is not confined only to voting and working. The radical feminists 
always wanted in their frantic identitarianism to eliminate the difference 
between the sexes. Somehow they tended to deny or to hide the whole 
biological status of women.** There were certain aspects of feminine 
life which this weird horde of furies and ancient spinsters wanted to 
abolish; they wanted the elimination of female suffering and therefore 
also of female dignity. 

Dignity is naturally an "aristocratic" virtue, best demonstrated in 
adverse circumstances, in bearing of suffering, in facing death, child- 
birth, or the guillotine. Dignity"as an attitude is also something personal 
and not collective. Democratism never liked dignity. Nothing infuriates 
the howling mob more than dignity, and it is rather interesting to com- 
pare the attitude of the political prisoners on the scaffold during the 



*Yet it would be very erroneous to think that National Socialism receives no support 
from German womanhood. The Fuhrer has a tremendous appeal for many women and 
National-Socialistic ideas and ideals attract the female character in many ways. Mass 
spirit, cruelty, political emotionalism are not the noblest feminine characteristics but 
they must be taken into consideration. The strength of National Socialism is on the 
emotional and not on the intellectual side. 

** There is also a masculine tendency in National-Socialist womanhood. General Luden- 
dorff's second wife dressed frequently in trousers and was an enthusiastic apostle of 
female equality. To be a man is also the great dream of many an enthusiastic Hitler girl. 
It is significant that some female labor camps tried to do away with certain aspects of 
female physiology — an experiment which ended rather disastrously. 



WOMAN TODAY 97 

French Revolution with the "Trotzkyist conspirators and wreckers" at 
the time of the Moscow trials, 1936-1938. Yet it must be admitted that 
this comparison is perhaps not fair. The Red torturers of 1938 are far 
more "progressive" people who studied anatomy and psychology more 
thoroughly than their Parisian forerunners. 

It was also symptomatic that after the great victory of democratism 
in 1918 the fashions showed marked masculine elements in female dress 
and feminine elements in the sartorial make-up of men. Women wore 
male cut clothing and bobbed their hair and the men donned Oxford 
trousers. We entered in 1919 a "practical" and "pragmatical" age. Com- 
fortism made itself felt. The universities were half empty and the 
polytechnics overcrowded. Young men wanted to become dancers, engi- 
neers, and bankers. 

There were movements all over Europe to abolish the humanistic 
middle school, the Gymnasium, the lycee. It seemed that Wall Street, the 
M. I. T., and Watson's Behaviorism had won the war. In Germany the 
Neue Sachlichkeit, a rather dull and pragmatic new style of life, came 
into being. The palaces decayed and two-room apartments with bath- 
rooms and kitchenettes came into fashion. It was an age of youth, skepti- 
cal sobriety, equality, utility, comfort, and proficiency. All these factors 
together created what people called in 1925 the "new female type," that 
quaint creature with shingled hair who fought against the penal laws 
directed against abortion; this "new woman," that instead of ruling 
the house and home, now dominated the streets in mass-produced clothes 
and crowded meetings, controlling them by sheer weight of numbers. 
There is nothing worse than anonymous masses of women; the man in 
a crowd subjected to mass hysteria is bad enough but his female counter- 
part is even more dangerous and degraded.* 

The reason for this may be that the male stands for the abstract, the 
woman for the concrete." The concrete submerged in an anonymous 
mass seems to be the greater trespass against the spirit.' 5 

There is a small group of women that is extremely successful in mer- 
cantile or technical enterprises. There are a few excellent female archi- 
tects, engineers, importers, doctors of medicine, and directors of depart- 
ment stores ; the world would probably not even collapse if women would 
replace men in commercial life. But there are no outstanding female 



* The club woman is even in the United States an object of ridicule. The whole empti- 
ness and shallowness of modern woman au dela de I'amour is brilliantly portrayed by 
the caricatures of Helen Hokinson in the New Yorker. 



98 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

theologians and philosophers; almost no painters or musical composers. 
Woman, quite able sometimes to acquire skills and technical knowledge, 
is too much earth bound and essentially of soulful nature (beseelte 
Natur). This does not exclude the passive enjoyment of the abstract. 
But while female creativeness is largely biological and physical, man's 
creative ability is predominantly a matter of ideas. 

Even in the more materialistic professions one often witnesses women 
sacrificing their specific female strength for some chimeric earthly "equal- 
ity"; so in America or in the USSR, women on the whole count only 
as a collective power of mediocrity. Even in these two afore-mentioned 
countries one finds them ordinarily only in average positions. They try 
to find their personal happiness, their luck, and their advancement as 
lawyers, doctors, and managers without very great success. As mothers, 
courtesans, or saints they might achieve far more. They know that their 
real strength does not lie in their personalities but in their number; 
countries menaced by ochlocracy and "progressivism" will therefore 
abound in female organizations. Yet only human beings who for one 
reason or the other feel weak or have grievances crowd into mass 
organizations* Thus we see progressive womanhood engulfed almost 
entirely in anonymity and their meagerly blossoming personalities either 
completely crushed or sacrificed at the altar of a club or a group. 76 

i 
Socialism, so nearly related to democratism, has a magnetic attraction 

for certain women. Werner Sombart explains the socialistic tendencies 
of women by their ressentiment of belonging to what he calls the bio- 
logically "inferior" sex. This ressentiment which creates, in his opinion, 
strong sympathies toward socialism and socialistic ideologies he con- 
siders to be based on an inferiority complex arising in specific cases from 
diseases, bodily deformations, poverty, the belongings to a despised race 
or the "inferior" sex. He mentions as typical example for his theory 
Rosa Luxemburg, the hysterical German Communist who was poor, 
a woman, and a hunchback. 

Yet the enthusiasm of some women for democratism lies deeper than 
all that. It is highly probable that most aspects of democratism have 
some inner connection with the negative sides of the female character. 
Snobism," the dislike for fixed, philosophical views, the tendency toward 
anonymity, collectivism, comfortism, geocentrism, and the easy ac- 



* We understand under this term large collective bodies who pool their interests for 
common protection (and aggression). 



WOMAN TODAY 99 

ceptance of compromises, the efforts to gain material security, the 
strong anthropocentrism, the advocacy of "gentleman" ideals, and the 
inclination toward a chronical envy (one of the main factors of commu- 
nism) all belong in the same category. 

It could be argued that normal life is after all nothing but a chain 
of clever compromises. The man who understands how to live well, the 
Lebenskitnstler as the Germans call him, is nothing but a virtuoso in 
compromises. The hero and the saint, on the other hand, are "clumsy," 
quixotic, and maladroit. They have nothing of the Lebenskitnstler and 
cannot help inflicting upon themselves wound after wound. The virtuoso 
of life, no less than the bonvivant, is a thoroughly feminine as well as 
effeminate product. 78 

Women have played a leading role in surprisingly destructive move- 
ments — before and after the march of the Dames des Holies to Ver- 
sailles. It is also probably true that negative traits in the character or 
the mind of women are far more conspicuous than in men. One need 
not be a Latin to be more distressed at finding a godless woman than 
a godless man. A woman is far nearer to the source of life and her 
detachment from the Creator is something terrifying, bordering on 
blasphemy. 

The horror of death so typical of modern man is probably another 
feminine aspect of our time. 79 "Media vita in morte sumus" is the 
hymn of a male and hierarchic age. The great thing in the life of 
the male is death just as love is the keynote of a female life. "Man 
is the glory of God, but woman is the glory of man," says St. Paul. The 
man finds his final reunion with God through the gate of death, but the 
woman gets the foreboding of such a reunion in her love to a man. Men 
also love women as children of God but, while this remains an indirect 
approach to Him, death always remains the shortest route to the Father. 
This is also the reason why there is such a deep metaphysical relation 
between love and death. 

Yet death is more than love. Viewed from such a male angle, life should 
be a terrible duel, an agonia in Unamuno's sense between God and devil, 
a struggle in alliance with one group of passions against the other pas- 
sions. Life in itself is a risk which we have to face bravely ; all its hor- 
rors have a deeper value — war with all its ordeals, hunger, destruction, 
death, and the inhuman curse of labor and work. 

Yes, the curse of labor. So it is written in the Bible and its truth re- 
echoes in the hearts of most men. The male is by nature lazy and un- 



100 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

ambitious. The industrious man is a truly feminine phenomenon. In 
male cultures men only work in order to live, but in nations where women 
domineer, men show ambition, zeal for labor, and they frequently work 
themselves to death firmly believing that they live in order to work.* 
On account of the fact that ambition is a female characteristic, women 
are always going to be outraged at the sight of potential energies which 
are not transformed into kinetic energies. The mobile life is urban and 
female. Haste is not only unmanly, but — as Ortega has demonstrated it 
— also the very negation of our immortality. The Middle Ages was a 
period without haste, it was male and timeless. 

The true man is attracted by an adventurous life while woman stands 
for security, concerned for the safety of her home and her family. 80 The 
desperate craving for safety is always the surest sign of the effemination 
of a culture or nation. The replacement of Trust in divine Providence by 
efficient insurance companies** is always a danger signal which should 
not be ignored. 



* See the amusing account of Geoffrey Moss in The Siege of the Alcdzar about tht 
Spaniard who voluntarily raised the salaries in his workshop. The result was that hi» 
employees preferred to work shorter hours with the old wage thus preferring liberty 
to cash. 

** The classic and most natural "old-age insurance" was, needless to say, a numerous 
and devoted progeny. 



PART II 

IDENTITARIANISM IN TIME 
AND SPACE 

"I desire that one govern by the light and with the light, provided one 
looks for light where it is, namely, outside the masses, the instincts and the 
prejudices of the mob ; I want the examination made clear from above, the dis- 
cussion tempered by belief, liberty held in check by duty." — Montalembert. 



I 

MONARCHY 



"The absolute ruler may be a Nero, but he is some- 
times a Titus or Marc Aurelius; the people is often 
Nero, but never Marc Aurelius." — Rivarol. 

It is probable that "democracy" is the most original form of "organized" 
society. 81 One could well imagine that if seven out of ten cavemen 
wanted to do a thing collectively in one way and the three others decided 
differently, the majority of these cavemen (assuming that they are of 
about equal bodily strength) could force the rest to accept their decision. 
The rule of majorities, in combination with the employment of brutal 
force, is likely to be the most primitive form of government in the 
development of mankind. 82 

As soon as society valued expediency, justice, and reason more than 
the momentary whims of mere majorities, a crystallization of leadership 
probably came about. This later form was probably a compromise be- 
tween majority rule and the monarchical idea. The lack of an efficient 
executive still made the consent of the large bulk of the people a neces- 
sity and a council often acted as an intermediary ; frequently the council 
was the primary organ and the "leader" (chieftain, ruler) only emerged 
as a primus inter pares of the oligarchic council. The only practical and 
workable form of "democracy" today has most of these features. The 
deputies form a vague sort of aristocracy or oligarchy, and the presi- 
dents and prime ministers are often nothing else but kinglets with a 
time limit. There has been practically no major attempt to return to 
•direct democracy in large states ; only a few cranks would like to restore 
this archaic order with the help of modern, technical devices. They 
dream of an endless chain of plebiscites; the questions would be put 
to the citizens by radio and the answer would be given by pushing a 

103 



104 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

white button for "ayes" and a black one for "no" a couple of hours 
after the questioning. Adding machines in the capital would then give 
a clear picture of the general will at a certain moment. Some people 
consider Dr. Gallup's Institute for Public Opinion to be such a fore- 
runner of tomorrow's Integral Direct Democracy, yet there is little 
likelihood that there will ever come such a reductio ad absurdum of 
democracy. The political development goes clearly in the opposite 
direction. 

We must not forget that political ochlocracy has no scientific basis 
and that its defenders in the past one hundred years came forward with 
far more sentimental reasons than the most enthusiastic adherents of 
monarchy.* 3 Berdyaev in his Christianity and Class-War emphasizes 
this point very strongly. There are many superstitions which we find 
expressed or implied in connection with the rhapsodies of unthinking 
exponents of democratism, while some of these tenets are not seldom 
more seriously espoused by saner minds. For argument's sake we might 
enumerate just a few of these superstitious concepts : 

1. All human beings are equal. 

2. One human being can err, the majority of a group never. 

3. Everybody is able to judge every political question. 

4. The representatives in the Parliament are necessarily the best heads. 

5. All intelligent and honest men are popular. 

6. The functional value of the ignorant and the learned are the same. 

7. Both sexes have the same abilities and functions. 

8. Masses have an unerring instinct. 

9. Majorities have an inate sense of justice. 

10. No human being is indispensable. 

11. Majorities are the better part of the whole. 

12. Truth can stand by itself. The lie never prevails. 

13. More progress means more happiness. 

14. A majority suppressing a minority is a lesser evil than a minority 
dominating a majority* 

15. More ochlocracy means more liberty. 

16. The masses value liberty more than everything else. 

17. Liberty, progress, "democracy," peace, and social justice are thoroughly 
interconnected. 



* A Christian will consider a tyrannical person bossing a city brutally a lesser evil 
than a whole city lynching one man. In the first case there is one sinner and thousands 
of sufferers, in the latter case thousands of sinners and one sufferer. The materialist will 
look at the problem the other way round. He is never interested in sin, but as a humani- 
tarian only in suffering. His final logical conclusion is euthanasia and the sacrifice of 
individuals to the whim of the masses. 



MONARCHY 105 

One could go on with this list endlessly. Today some of these points 
are viewed with skeptical despair by many "democrats" but they never- 
theless cling to their faith with bitter tenacity, although they have given 
up its basic tenets — a situation remindful of Roman-Greek paganism 
in the third century. The facade still stands but the interiors are moth 
eaten and decayed and the very foundations are crumbling underneath. 
It is only the lack of hurricanes, thunderstorms, and earthquakes which 
still prevents the final disaster. 

It is also remarkable that ochlocracy never had brilliant advocates 
like monarchy, aristocracy, or socialism. There is nobody in the "demo- 
cratic" camp who can be compared for brilliancy — I do not say ortho- 
doxy in each case — to de Tocqueville, Marx, Maurras, de Reynold, 
Trotzky, Spengler, Proudhon, Plato, Bainville, Aristotle, Ortega, and 
St. Thomas. Democracy never had, and probably never will have, an 
appeal for the man of original genius.* 

In Europe monarchy usually sprang from some sort of "democracy" 
through open consent or through tyranny which became consolidated and 
gained a certain amount of popularity. The first monarchs, the founders 
of the European dynasties, were all outstanding people who excelled 
either through their wisdom, virtue, bravery, sanctity, or at least 
through their shrewdness, diplomacy, brutality, or daredevil courage. 
None of them was insignificant. The families of these rulers constantly 
intermarried; even back in the early Middle Ages the tendency was 
clearly one of intermarriage between the royal and imperial houses 
with the result that we find at the end of this epoch in the Christian 
Occident one large family of rulers with many different branches, united 
by the common faith as well as by the ties of common ancestors, of 
common tombs, of common blood. 

There is little wonder that the constant crossbreeding of the progeny 
of "excellent" people created a superior strain. The steady intermarriage 
of children begotten and born by parents engaged in administration, rule, 
jurisdiction, and military affairs created a class of men and women with 
a special capacity for this task. The study of heredity and practical 



* It would be difficult to classify a man like Jacques Maritain. He exalts a "democratic" 
concept which is not a living reality and attacks existing democracy (Rousseau's democ- 
racy, as he calls it) violently. Henri Bergson also seemed to approve vaguely of 
"democratic" principles. (See: Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion.) Maritain's 
sympathies seem to be on the whole with a representative government, with many checks 
and balances. (Cf. also J. P. Mayer, Political Thought, London, 1939, p. 273.) 



106 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

biology teaches us that there is definitely such a thing as inheritance of 
certain intellectual capacities and trends; we have only to observe the 
small gypsy boys with their violins, or six- and seven-year-old children 
of watchmakers in the Swiss Jura whose ancestors have made clocks 
and watches for generations; their dexterity in handling watches would 
astound every outsider. 

The crossbreeding of the royal and imperial families of Europe has 
also resulted in a large amount of inbreeding, which in itself is not 
necessarily an evil. The characteristics of the common near ancestor 
will be overemphasized in the progeny and cousins who have a grand- 
father with a congenital defect of his eyesight will have to fear an even 
greater ocular ailment in their children. Yet positive characteristics 
are increased in a similar way. If we make a survey of the royal breed 
of the past hundred years (when parliaments already overshadowed 
monarchical power) we still find an astounding number of highly gifted 
men and women. 84 Few of them were specialized in one direction or the 
other, but most of them had a great many talents and abilities. The 
Prince Consort, Albert of Coburg-Gotha, was far above the average, just 
as his wife, Queen Victoria, his son, Edward VII, and his daughter, "Em- 
press Frederick." William II,* in spite of certain political mistakes, 
was a good painter, a first-rate archaeologist, a fair military expert, a 
fine amateur gardener, a master of many languages, and a man of very 
great general knowledge. High above the average, too, was the murdered 
Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the best shot of Europe, a man of great 
character and piety, an architect, military expert, reorganizer of the navy, 
one of the greatest and most educated art collectors, an original Austrian 
and foreseeing statesman.** King Ferdinand of Bulgaria had abilities 
which ranked from engine driving to political plotting and ornithology.*** 
Among the great alpinists we find the late King Albert of the Belgians 
as well as his son. Most Scandinavian kings, the queen of the Nether- 
lands, the late king of Saxony, the last emperor of Brazil were and are 
people above the average. Alexander I and Alexander II of Russia 
belong in the same category. Even a madman like Louis II of Bavaria 
or a Louis I with his easygoing morals were culturally a great asset. The 



* Cf . the memoires by Bruce Lockhart and the fine monograph by J. Daniel Chamier. 

** Cf. The biography by Dr. Viktor Eisenmenger, Krist6ffy's "Magyarorszag kalvariaja. 
Az osszeomlas utjan." Also "Apis und Este" by Bruno Brehm, and the biography by 
Theodor von Sosnosky. 

*** Cf. the excellent biography by Hans Roger Madol. 



MONARCHY 107 

"tyranny" of a George III, measured by modern standards, smacks of 
charity. 

The Comte de Paris, pretender to the French throne, would compare 
very favorably with most existing presidents.* Francis Joseph of Austria 
was a ruler of remarkable integrity and had a sense of duty, although 
lacking imagination. His grandnephew, Charles I, last emperor of 
Austria, was a saintly man. All these rulers were, naturally, on account 
of the curtailing influence of their constitutions, less "spectacular" than 
those of the past — Philip II, Charles V, Charlemagne, Mathias Corvinus, 
Peter the Great, Maria Theresa, St. Louis, Frederick II, or Louis XIV. 85 

The superficial student of history stands under the impression that 
Europe before the nineteenth century was torn asunder by endless 
wars and disagreements, yet there was far more inner unity in spite 
of the lack of airliners and superhighways. The interrelationship be- 
tween the European monarchs also had the practical effect that totali- 
tarian wars were not waged and that between a.d. 900 and 1866 no 
European monarchy was wiped off the map with the exception of Poland 
and the temporary grabs of the French Revolution. There is also little 
doubt that the absence of the modern means of war contributed to the 
relative mildness of medieval warfare.** Yet the fact that all rulers were 
related was of greater importance and it acted as a break during peace 
negotiations; playing bridge against one's cousin or brother-in-law, one 
is glad to gain small sums but never intends to ruin the opponent. Wars 
during the Middle Ages were collective duels and to a certain extent even 
a privilege of the nobility and their kinsmen. The introduction of mer- 
cenaries — soldiers receiving a solde — lowered the moral level of war- 
fare. The towns, defending themselves against a decadent, robbing knight- 
hood, hired professional soldiers. These, thanks to the invention of 
gunpowder, were able to destroy the castles of the marauding or rebelling 
nobility. Thus went down what once had been, in the days of its true 
service, the finest symbol of European liberty. 86 

The idea of the mercenary springs from the same mentality as the 
one expressed by the two Chinese watching a couple of Europeans 
playing tennis under the hot sun of Shanghai. As they seemed rather 



* It is also true that future monarchs ordinarily had the advantage over president or 
prime ministers in having been educated for their task from earliest childhood on. 

** Inventors of poison gas, tanks, pursuit planes, bombers, floating mines, etc., might 
have run the usually decried risk of getting into trouble with the ecclesiastic authorities. 
They might have been possibly accused of being in league with the devil — an accusation 
probably not without foundation. 



108 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

exhausted, one of the sons of the Celestial Empire remarked to the 
other: "It's odd. This club has only well-to-do members. They easily 
could afford coolies to play in their stead." Yet the institution of mer- 
cenary armies still did not mark the nadir of war methods in Europe. 
It was at least not a return to the laws of the jungle, of primitive tribes, 
where every male capable of bearing arms has to join in. The officers 
had still the background of warriors; 87 they were frequently second or 
third sons of noble families out for adventures, but nevertheless educated 
in the habits of chivalry. The average mercenary, on the other hand, 
was usually a ne'er-do-well, maybe the son of the henchman; he be- 
longed to the scum of the cities or the village and he was often nothing 
else than a courageous jailbird. 

These mercenary armies had many advantages over the modern sys- 
tem. On the whole they fought without hatred. It was true that the 
discipline was inadequate, measured by our standards, but no brutality 
could keep the liberty-loving men of the sixteenth century in bounds. 
The mercenary also liked fighting for its own sake ; he had volunteered 
for this job and he needed no propaganda to instill him with hatred for 
his enemy. The loss of his life on the battlefield was certainly not an 
irreparable one; from a social point of view it meant just one dissolute 
element less in the state, while his final suffering was often an expiation 
for a wild, cruel, and disorderly life. Prison camps were rare. Captured 
officers often gave their word of honor not to fight in the present war 
any more and were allowed to retire to their estates, while soldiers, made 
prisoners of war, often enlisted in the "enemy" armies. Ministries of 
propaganda and information who might stir up the feelings of the popula- 
tion did not exist, nor was any need felt for such an institution. The decent 
burgher stayed at home, far from the scene of war, and rarely did he 
see anything of the fighting or the fighting forces except when an army 
happened to pass his town. The rape of Magdeburg, or even the Sacco 
di Roma, was hardly as thorough as the destruction of Ypres in 1914— 
1918 or of Warsaw and Rotterdam in the present war. Neither was it 
easy to take a well-fortified town; the burghers had a good chance to 
defend themselves behind the walls until relief came; the menace of a 
passing army was far greater to the open village. A heavier war taxation 
only came into use when the patriarchal monarchy switched over to 
more absolutistic forms after Protestant political theories had pene- 
trated all European countries. Before the advent of absolutism, monarchs 
were often in dire financial straits which could only be alleviated by 



MONARCHY 109 

borrowing and not by taxation. Taxes were more or less voluntary con- 
tributions by cities and estates.* 

Traditional monarchy enjoyed an added advantage over modern states 
inasmuch as it could not only boast of a juridical continuity but also of 
the possibility of following a planned national and foreign policy. We 
have the example of the "political testaments" of numerous monarchs 
which not seldom served as Leitmotiv for the policy of generations or 
centuries. We do not claim that the policies of the preconstitutional 
monarchies adhered necessarily to a blueprint, but it must be em- 
phasized that planned action (planned for a long time to come) was 
feasible. The term "perfidious Albion," on the other hand, was the 
result of parliamentarian instability; if the Whigs agreed to a certain 
course then little doubt was left that their replacement by Tories would 
force the country into a course diametrically opposed to the one sup- 
ported by the Whigs. Ochlocracy (even more so than aristocracy) is 
based upon change and instability; ochlocracy is revolution in perma- 
nence. A constructive foreign policy in the ochlocratic world is there- 
fore well-nigh impossible. The continuous change of plans in the 
ochlocratic setup is nevertheless a minor evil of that system, although 
it is true that a bad plan is better than none. The catastrophical aspect 
of "democratic" international politics lies in the almost total absence of 
mutual confidence without which a lasting peace is unthinkable. 88 

As for the peace treaties, they were concluded after shorter or 
longer negotiations, conducted usually by noblemen or ecclesiastics. 
Social events brought the delegates nearer to each other personally 
and the very last peace congress dealing with "Pan-European" affairs 
— the Congress of Vienna — was one of the greatest social events 
in Europe. (The Congress of Berlin in 1878 falls into a similar 
category.) Nobody was more lionized than Prince de Talleyrand, 
representative of the defeated power which had menaced the rest 
of Europe for decades. Popular sentiment happily played no role in 
these negotiations. 

Yet Talleyrand carried great strength in Vienna because he was the 



* Japanese militarism is largely ascribed by Ernst O. Hauser, in his brilliant articles 
and books, to the pseudo-aristocratic "emancipation" of the middle classes since the end 
of the shogunate. The Japanese monarchy varies totally from the European monarchy 
in its lack of international blood ties and of Christian tradition, but the aggressive element 
in Nippon is nevertheless a military caste, with a bourgeois background, and not the 
crown or the nobility. (Cf. also the articles of Joseph Newman in the New York Herald- 
Tribune, Dec. 28, 1941, and Hugh Byas's Government by Assassination, New York, 1942.) 



110 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

representative of a legitimate monarch and not of a makeshift revolu- 
tionary power without European responsibilities. A dynasty belonged 
and belongs, so to say, to the "natural features" of a country, like the 
mountains, the rivers, the flora, and the historical monuments. The 
continuation of a dynasty was procured by the "sweet process of nature" 
(to use the words of Bossuet) and the heir to the throne was the product 
of the conjugal love between the monarch and the (foreign) queen who 
had not only espoused a man but also a country. (This international 
character of monarchy finds its expression in the fact that the death of 
a Christian ruler resulted and still results in an official mourning of 
all European courts.) A king could be forced to abdicate or persuaded 
to lay down his crown, but the dynasties who were parts of the countries 
(almost in the geographical sense) as well as states (in the political sense) 
were everybody's property, i.e., res publico.. The royal cross consisted 
largely in the fact that the royal families had no personal and private 
lives in the sense the other classes enjoyed it. A royal marriage was not 
less res publico, than a royal pregnancy (officially announced) or a 
royal birth. 

The question as to which are the intrinsic qualities of monarchy as 
compared with other forms of government has not been raised yet. St. 
Thomas Aquinas considers monarchy to be the best of the three good 
forms of state, the other two being aristocracy and polity, while he calls 
democracy the mildest of the three evil forms tyranny and oligarchy 
being the others. "There is only one queen among the bees and in the 
whole universe one God, Creator and director of all," writes the Angelic 
Doctor in his treatise De Regimine Principum. Natural law is, to a great 
extent, the basis of St. Thomas' philosophy, and his point of view can 
justly be called "cosmic." One might raise the objection that monarchy 
is a wicked system of government because it attempts to imitate the 
great monarcha of the cosmos and therefore contains a certain element 
of blasphemy. Yet the very cell of human society, the family, in its 
natural form is also a patriarchal monarchy guided by the same natural- 
cosmic principle. This close resemblance between patriarchal monarchy 
and the family has already been recognized by Abel Bonnard in his 
excellent book Les Moddris.*" 

The traditional European of the prereformation period lived and be- 
lieved in the patriarchal principle which was one of authority based on 
love. Medieval man had not only a physical father, but also a Father in 
Heaven, a Holy Father in Rome, 90 the Monarch (the Pater Patriae), the 



MONARCHY 111 

godfathers, and a "Father" in the person of his confessor. It was his 
physical father who had brought him into being, cooperating with 
the Divine Power of Creation. The physical father was truly regarded 
to be the auctor (in a similar, not identical sense, as God is creator mundi) 
and human beings looked upon themselves to be existing ex voluntate 
viri. Woman was merely in the position (physically as well as psycho- 
logically) to accede to man's will, to reject it or to influence man's free 
will through her power of attraction. 

St. Thomas has only one doubt in regard to monarchy, and that is 
the possibility of its development into a tyranny, whereas Plato in his 
Republic (Books 8-9) 91 sees "tyranny" as a natural development, 92 a 
"final stage" of democracy. In this respect he is more "modern" than 
the great Aquinate. 93 

The only advantage St. Thomas thinks "democracy" has over tyranny 
is the fact that "democracy" at least seems agreeable to the many while 
tyranny only benefits one person. Yet tyranny as well as monarchy in his 
eyes are more "effective" — in the good or bad sense — because power 
is more effective when centralized than when spread out or divided: 
virtus unita magis est efficax ad effectum inducendum, quam dispersa 
vel divisa. This in his opinion is the reason as well why these two forms 
are also extremes in both moral directions. 94 St. Thomas also sees the 
advantage of an expert central power over the vague opinions of the lay 
people. 95 Yet he has doubts about the value of the element of heredity 
in the established monarchy. Some elements of primitive democracy and 
aristocracy then still clung to the institution of kingship and the royal 
strain was not yet the homogeneous unit it came to be in the later Middle 
Ages. The Popes at first were elected by the acclamation of the Roman 
people and then later by the cardinals. Their secular defenders, the Holy 
Roman Emperors, received their office through a mixture of election and 
heredity.* The dangers of such elections were clearly seen by St. Thomas ; 
in his opinion they were likely to divide the people into hostile fractions 
— the beginning of party rule and party system was always looked upon 
with suspicion by the Church. We must keep in mind that the corporate 
system of "orders," ordines, as favored by Pius XI, is strictly nonpolitical 
and not based on party rule. The Fascist corporate state is a mere 
caricature of the Catholic blueprint. There is no insistence on a corporate 



* St. Thomas recommended a mixed form of government in his Summa, I— II, 105, 
I in C. 



112 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

state in the Quadragesimo Anno, but of a state that favors and aids the 
nonpolitical corporate system. 

Patriarchal monarchy unfortunately gave sway at a later period to 
absolute monarchy, which became entangled in nationalist etatistic move- 
ments, a process which finally led to a suicide of the monarchical form 
of government, which saw its Golden Age after the decline of feudalism 
and before the rise of absolutism.* 

The theory of the Divine Rights of Kings, as we see it under debate 
in the seventeenth-century England, is naturally not a part of Catholic 
theology. It was Cranmer who advanced this doctrine during the reign 
of Edward VI and it was artificially revived by James I. It received due 
attention by Catholic theologians like Suarez and St. Robert Bellarmine 
who condemned it in explicit terms. The formula "We, so and so, by the 
grace of God, king of this and that country," used by Christian rulers, 
is no affirmation of an absurd claim; whatever we are, we are by the 
grace of God and stating this fact nobody usurps a title to a divine 
prerogative. 96 

During the Middle Ages nationalism was extremely weak.** It did 
not exist in the modern, linguistic sense of the nineteenth or in the 
racial sense of the twentieth century. Nationalism, as far as we are 
justified to use this term in relation to the centuries preceding the 
discovery of the Western Hemisphere, was merely an exaggerated loyalty 
to the people considered to be one's conationals, people of the same 
language and custom. "Statism" was a slightly greater danger and the 
idea of the sovereignty of the state was alive in different forms centuries 
before Hugo Grotius. It was only too natural that statism, however 



* See Donoso Cortes, Oeuvres, Paris, 1858, Vol. II, pp. 2S6-2S7. 

**We have clearly to distinguish between statism (itatisme), which is an enthusiasm 
directed toward the state as a legal and bureaucratic unit, nationalism, a herdist feeling 
of identity toward the ethnic people (Volk) with the same language and habit (inside and 
outside the state), racialism, a morbid frenzy for human beings of the same biological 
stock, patriotism, an enthusiasm for the natural features of the fatherland, and imperial- 
ism which seeks territorial expansion of the country (frequently under nationalistic or 
racialistic pretexts). Citizenship — a legal status; nationality — a cultural status; and 
race, as a biological status and condition, underlies the first three "isms." It is deplorable 
that common usages not less than newspapers and even dictionaries have helped to 
create a total chaos in these technical terms; nationalism is most frequently confounded 
with either imperialism or statism and the concepts of race and nation are used as 
synonymous. (The "German race," "French nationalism in the seventeenth century," 
"Patriots rally against foreign language newspaper" are just a few contributions to the 
general confusion.) 



MONARCHY 113 

inarticulate it was, had to collide with the Church. Marsilius (Marsiglio) 
of Padua, who preached the priority of the state over the Church, exalted 
at the same time the monarchical prerogatives. His Defensor Minor 
expressed a view on the relationship between state and Church which 
had similarities with ideas professed on the same subject by Louis XIV, 
Joseph II, Napoleon, Hitler, and Peter the Great. 

There is little doubt that the works of Marsilius were well known to 
John Wycliffe, the first and probably most original of the "reformers." 
In his book De Eucharistia he denies transubstantiation and thus deprives 
the priest of his supernatural power. In De officio regis he declares the 
king to be second only to God. All Popes after Sylvester, who had 
received the Patrimonium Petri from Constantine, were, according to 
Wycliffe, representatives of antichrist, because they had yielded to the 
materialistic temptation of temporal power. His "poor preachers" soon 
infested the country and his idea of a Church devoid of all earthly 
possessions and without any visible organization first attracted the 
nobility who hoped to enjoy the spoils from the liquidation of the Cath- 
olic Church in England. Yet Wycliffe's insistence on the supremacy of 
royal power displeased them and the rise of Lollhardy after his death 
gave them no further encouragement to support his heresy. 

Wycliffe actually dreamed of a national Church headed by the king, 
a Church wholly independent from Rome. Apart from the fact that this 
would have paved the way to an absolute monarchy 97 — the reductio ad 
absurdum of every monarchy — without any interference from the side 
of the Church, it would have given an enormous impetus to Nationalism. 
National messianism is one of the most subtle and therefore most danger- 
ous forms of nationalism. If the central teaching authority is eliminated, 
the "national" Churches, living a life of their own, soon grow into 
dogmatically and culturally widely diverging units and form, as a matter 
of course, different religions. 

If nation A has the religion X and the the nation B follows the 
religion Y, the already existing national-cultural-linguistic abyss will be 
widened by religious antagonism. The members of the nation A are now 
thoroughly insistent that their religion X is the right and true faith 
and that other nations are therefore not only different but also basically 
wrong in their beliefs. This causes a fatal increase in national pride which 
now assumes a religious aspect. The A's persist in considering them- 
selves (solely endowed with the true religion) as chosen by God, not 
only chosen to understand truth and be rewarded with eternal bliss but 



114 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

also chosen to "save" the world. (This "salvation" is best achieved 
by rule.) 

This present-day national messianism is not only typical of the Jews, 
but also of the British, North Germans, Russians, and North Americans. 
Catholic nations never have it, neither is it typical of the oriental 
religions like supranational Mohammedanism and Buddhism. The 
strongly insular Japanese Shinto and Hinduism are the exceptions. 
Nationalism within the framework of Mohammedanism is merely due 
to European influence. The basically Christian attitude of Mohammedans 
toward other anthropological races puts many followers of Christ to 
shame. Yet the local heresies of Europe and America possess this 
national messianism to an astounding degree; British Israelitism, the 
Ku Klux Klaners, the National Socialists and their numerous fore- 
runners and last but not least the Russian Messianists of both denomina- 
tions — the consciously messianistic Schismatics not less than the sub- 
consciously messianistic Bolsheviks — illustrate this truism rather well. 
The heresies, on account of their intrinsic lack of Catholicity, always 
were the protagonists of a suicidal parochialism in time and space. Their 
rise means the decline of Europe. 

The itatisme (statism) of the later heresies such as North Teutonic 
Lutheranism, Scotch Dutch Calvinism, Czech Hussitism, Anglicanism, 
and the Eastern Schism have exalted the separatistic and state-omni- 
potential tendencies of the herdists who always clamored for their little, 
uniformistic homesteads. Yet the real mother of Caesaro-Papism and 
at the same time the source of all great heretical trends in early Christen- 
dom is Byzantium and her representative in the modern world — Moscow, 
the Third Rome. 98 

The truth that all power is derived from God was thus perverted." 
The victory of Lutheranism in northern Europe was largely due to the 
treachery and shortsightedness of the rulers and the aristocracy. 
Absolute monarchy could not maintain a couple of centuries later its 
position once the hierarchic structure of Europe was badly damaged. The 
weakening of the Church resulted in the impairing of the most efficient 
control against royal tyrants. The pendulum which had swung too far 
on one side was soon to swing to the other extreme. The mass wars 
under a "religious" slogan of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were 
already foreshadowed by the Thirty Years' War, a large scale massacre 
embittered by ideological antagonisms. 



MONARCHY 115 

The phenomenon of absolute monarchy based on Protestant govern- 
mental theories was thus only a comparatively short-lived straw fire which 
lit the way for a new and even more dangerous movement — the rule of 
the masses. Luther, who taught that human beings morally are utterly 
wretched and hopelessly corrupted through original sin, invoked the 
establishment of a severe, efficient, and vindicative authority (Obrigkeit) . 
Thus the decline of Europe started with heresy which begot personal 
absolutism, absolutism begot the reaction of the masses, finally the masses 
sought their personification in an absolutist "leader." 

We witness in the eighteenth century the preparation of the French 
Revolution by individualism and the degeneration of the old "liberal" 
trends into economical liberalism of the deterministic Manchesterian 
pattern. Egalitarianism only appears in strongly collectivistic societies 
where strong exogenous powers try to shape persons into "individuals," 
deprived of their original character. The "individual" is merely the last 
indivisible unit of the "mass," and individualism the last, grotesque, and 
hopeless fight of depersonalized man within the ocean of collectivism to 
withstand the encroachment of the masses. Charles V had a personality 
but Gustave de Nerval, who promenaded a tamed lobster in the streets 
of Paris, was a mere individualist. 100 

Collectivism implies egalitarianism. An ideal mass is homogenous and 
consists therefore of equal atoms. Egalitarianism as well as collectivism 
are thus incompatible with liberty. 101 Force must not only be used for the 
leveling process in the initial stage — it becomes necessarily a permanent 
factor in order to maintain the unorganic "symmetrical order." This 
brutal force is necessary for any and every egalitarian effort. It is even 
more necessary in the case of a frantic identitarianism. The desire for 
more equality and identity becomes finally a mania and the use of more 
force a sadistic delight. Gynaecocracy and pedocracy, so familiar to 
ochlocratic cultures, become a part of the great program and even the 
animals rise to the level of human equality. 102 From there it is only a 
short step to a terroristic pantheism bordering on madness.* 

Yet even in the urban life a truly inhuman equality can be achieved 
only by sheer force and the more logical a people will be by nature, 
the more brutally will this equality be realized. A comparison between 
America, England, France, Germany, Russia, and Spain demonstrate to 
us the various methods of handling the problem of equality. French 



* See the description of "facticism" in Erik and Christiane von Kuehnelt-Leddihn's, 
Moscow, 1979, New York, 1940. 



116 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

egalitarianism was comparatively mild — yet it was far more ferocious 
than for instance American egalitarianism. But for modern ochlocracies 
at least fictional equality is essential; as a tendency it is basic for the 
creation of mere masses. Masses or mobs consist necessarily of identical 
or similar atoms in order to function as great irresistible units which, 
confident in their homogeneity and quantity, are not only able to smother 
all obstacles but also to transmit in the shortest time emotional and 
"electric" shocks to the remotest parts of the whole. The French philos- 
ophers had prepared the advent of the "individual" and the French 
Revolution completed their work. "The philosophy of the French 
Revolution," quotes Stapleton in his Life of Canning, "reduced the 
nation to individuals so as to, later on, congregate them into mobs." And 
these mobs on account of their strong inferiority complex shouted loudly 
for equality and demanded the elimination of everybody who dared to 
be different. The proposition of the elders of Strasbourg was actually 
carried out with human beings who defied the iron law of similarity and 
identity; they were shortened — beheaded by the progressive medical 
machinery of Docteur Guillotin. 

Equality, identity, and uniformity have since been the backbone of 
every ochlocratic movement and the only liberty compatible with the 
true spirit of ochlocracy is the collective liberty — the liberty of a class 
or a nation state. The element of equality has never succeeded in getting 
a foothold in international politics — not even in the League of Nations, 
where the position of the Great Powers was legally different from that 
of the smaller states. 103 Modern nationalism appealed less to the "demo- 
cratic" demand of equality than to the worship of majorities which is not 
less in the ochlocratic tradition. It does not recognize the fact, that each 
nation is an entity in itself, having its own life and its intransferable 
destiny, and, independently of its size, an inalienable right for existence.* 
This conception would resemble too much a personalistic, medieval point 
of view. Modern nationalism prefers to count the noses of the inhabitants 
by national groups in a given geographical sector and then let the 
majority rule. A German Empire in Central Europe with eighty million 
Germans and 79,999,999 non-Germans is a thoroughly "democratic" 
proposition in the new style of 1942. 



* Small European states outraged only too often the sense of proportion of American 
tourists. They may be monstrosities from a commercial point of view, but liberty and 
personality demand sacrifices in blood . . . and cash. 



MONARCHY 117 

The reader will now understand why "democracy" and democratism are 
totally different from liberalism. We clearly mean here liberalism before 
it became an ism, when it was still aristocratic liberality and generosity 
coupled with the natural thirst for liberty and independence. Continental 
liberalism was never genuine nor honest ; it was totalitarian like all other 
parties. 104 In early times it found its political expression in England, 
Hungary, Spain, and southern France and it existed at the same time, 
though not so articulate and formulated, in the more mountainous parts 
of Europe. The seventeenth century in England witnesses a restatement 
of these liberal principles and it is this second and secondary English 
liberalism and whiggism which, finally based on economic cognitions 
and theories, nonconformist sentiments and bourgeois principles, in- 
fluenced the French Revolution, and later even the rest of Europe. 
Modern liberal sentiment in England is something rather complex and 
it is difficult to tell where the primary aristocratic (whiggish) liberalism 
ends and the economic, intellectual liberalism of Manchester begins. 

A certain symbiosis between liberalism and ochlocracy is a frequent 
phenomenon in the nineteenth and even in the twentieth century. In 
the case of cooperation of these two ideologies liberalism is ordinarily of 
the nonaristocratic, Manchesterian type which shows a remarkable 
parallel with communism. Both, bolshevism and modern, bourgeois 
liberalism, started as economic theories and became Weltanschauungen, 
world philosophies. It is only in Anglo-Saxon America that the cry for 
"democracy" is tempered by liberalism of the more aristocratic type. The 
amenities of American life are due to the British-Whiggish tradition of 
the signers of the Declaration of Independence — most of them "gentle- 
men" — and not to the desperate appeal for equality of the poor 
immigrants of the Fin de Siecle who had nothing to lose and everything 
to gain. 105 

Liberty was quickly trampled on by the French Revolution, which 
hastened to get rid of its aristocratic or intellectual supporters. 
Lavoisier, the famous mathematician and astronomer, was condemned 
to death with the characteristic remark "The Republic has no use for 
savants," and the Noailles, Mirabeaus, and Lafayettes were relegated 
to the background. Total identitarianism grew in all spheres of life. 
The revolution in the Vendee, where peasants and noblemen had risen 
against the identitarian terrorists of Paris, was crushed and soon the 
levSe en masse was well under way. As each citizen had the same rights 
he also had the same duties. 106 The return to the military tradition of 



118 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

Central Africa, where every male has to join up in tribal warfare, was 
perfect. 107 Militarism could start its career and soon a military dictator 
was due to appear at the head of a gigantic army of conscripts, which 
made the Prussian army of Frederick II seem like a kindergarten in 
comparison. 

Militarism as a nationality accepted idea and norm is feasible only in 
a "democratic," i.e., politically conscious nation, where each "individual" 
is imbued with his great importance as acting and directing part of the 
whole — otherwise the militaristic mass sentiment remains a dead letter. 
There is no militarism without active enthusiasm. It is either a real 
movement or just the sum of governmental regulations, and in that case 
it can hardly be regarded as an ism. 10S 

Yet ochlocracy itself was and is not a sufficient basis for militarism. 
The identitarian fagade of identical military clothes — "uniforms" — 
which had come into fashion a few decades ago, was not enough. Within 
the borders of an ochlocratic country the stressing of equality between 
the different classes and groups gratified the herdist instincts ; in contact 
with the enemy another collective sameness had to be emphasized in 
opposition to the mass identity of the enemy. Nationalism, already 
nourished by the reformers reached a new height of intensity; the French 
republicans not only were ochlocrats but also "patriots" (yet in reality 
nationalists) . This "patriotism," which had nothing to do with the natural 
love for the soil, culture, tradition, and habits of the country, first became 
a parochial movement of cleverly disguised anti-Europeanism and later 
on a violent herdist sentiment, attacking in and outside the country all 
those who dared to belong to a "different" culture and linguistic unit, 
until it finally degenerated into racialism, demanding identity even in the 
color of hair and eyes, index of the skull, pigmentation of the skin and 
structure of the bones. 

The nationalistic "patriots" were necessarily antimonarchical, because 
monarchy in Europe is (as we have pointed out before) a basically inter- 
national institution. The wrath of the nationalists in the French Revolu- 
tion was mainly directed against the foreign-born queen, and her trial, 
a worthy forerunner of the staged trials of the Bolsheviks,* goes down 
as one of the greatest villainies of all times. 

It is characteristic that it is practically always the queen or empress 
who has to bear the whole brunt of revolutionary hatred. This is largely 



* Stage trials are a helpful prerequisite for influencing public opinion and therefore a 
current phenomenon in totalitarian ochlocracies. 



MONARCHY 119 

due to the strict marriage laws of most continental dynasties which force 
the princes to marry into foreign ruling families. The alien origin of the 
ruler's wife acts upon the nationalistic herdist like a red fabric on a bull. 
We see the same attitude of the masses toward the last empress of 
Russia, toward Empress Zita of Austria, Marie Antoinette, Queen Elena 
of Spain, Queen Henrietta Maria, and others. 

The masses were little aware of the fact that rulers almost had to 
be "foreigners" in order to rule wisely and objectively. Apart from the 
fact that intranational marriages of rulers prevented the total war, their 
inner detachment from the nation for which they had to care, served as 
a real advantage. In order to read a printed text, we have to hold it at 
a certain distance from our eyes. 109 Not only were the different queens 
"aliens," but most European dynasties (with the exception of the French 
Bourbons and the Serb Karagjorgjevic) were outlandish in their origin. 
Even most of the dictators are and were foreigners. Nemo propheta in 
patria means logically that all prophets are foreigners. Even herdism can 
hardly change that dictum entirely.* 

Yet the Bourbons were, to a certain extent, coresponsible for what 
happened. 110 The successfully aggressive policy of the Bourbons against 
the Holy Roman Empire, which resulted in German disunity, and the 
constant aid they had given to the Protestants, had also impaired 
Europe's well-being. The leaders of the French Revolution continued 
the centralism of Louis XIV, which had merely served as a means for 
the absolutism of the Roi Soleil. The old historic provinces were broken 
up into nondescript small departments, bearing the names of rivers or 
mountains; these reduced and depersonalized units, similar even in the 
size of territory and population, soon were to become helpless admin- 
istrative objects under the control of a central government in Paris. The 
city was supreme over the countryside and instead of the proud names 
of Artois, Picardie, Poitou, Gascogne, and Bretagne we had until recently 
such designations as Indre-et-Loire, Loire-et-Cher, Aube, Eure, Meurthe, 
Seine-et-Oise. . . .** 

Standardization was the keynote of the French Revolution and in 



* The reader will understand that we do not believe that monarchy is everywhere and 
anywhere superior to representative republics. But we believe that on account of Europe's 
diversity this supranational form of government has a greater raison d'etre than the 
more "national" representative republic, which in its turn harmonizes more with the 
American tradition and American needs. 

** The revival of the old Provinces by Marechal Petain, whatever his other merits or 
demerits are, was certainly a step in the right direction. 



120 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

spite of the fact that these standardizations, as, for instance, the intro- 
duction of the metric system, had their practical advantages, the general 
effect upon Europe was disastrous. 111 Nationalism, so necessary for 
every aggressive mass army, soon swept all over Europe and brought 
havoc to those parts of the Old Continent where, owing to the intimate 
symbiosis of different race nations, not only in the geographic proximity 
of near-by communities but also in the layer structure of race classes, 
the damage could never be repaired. In the former case local antagonisms 
flared up, in the latter the "class struggle" received an unexpected 
impetus.* 

The greatest suffering was reserved not only to the national-linguistic 
minorities in particular but to all minorities in general. People, who in 
one way or the other belonged to a minority group, had to pay the pen- 
alty to the majority rule of the "general will." Whoever opposed the 
general will (the general whim, the general language, the general opinion) 
was automatically a "traitor" and severest punishment was inflicted 
upon him. 112 The more "democratic" Europe became, the worse was the 
fate of minorities. The years 1918-1919 and 1933 heralded the darkest 
periods for European minorities. 

Plato in his Republic (Books 7-8-9) explains painstakingly the way 
in which democracies inevitably evolve into tyrannies. Tyrannies or 
dictatorships had in antiquity the tendency to become well-established 
monarchies, and thus the circle of governmental evolutions was closed. 
The transition from tyranny to monarchy is today extremely rare. After 
a millennium of settled monarchical tradition we have a dynasty on the 
throne or in exile for each country, and the coronation of a successful 
politician or party leader would only tend to make him ridiculous in 
the eyes of his followers and enemies alike. One must add that the idea 
of a Christian monarchy is quite distinct from the monarchical idea of 
antiquity, not only on account of the concept of legitimacy but also 
due to certain qualities which are intrinsic characteristics of a Christian 
monarchy. 



* It very frequently happens in Central and Eastern Europe that "class" means to 
all practical purposes "national character" just as it may mean "racial character" in the 
American South where the upper classes are white and the lower classes predominantly 
colored (apart from the "poor white trash"). The antagonism between a Hungarian 
burgher and a Slovakian peasant in northern Hungary or that of a Polish squire and 
a Ukranian servant could now not only be exploited by the socialist agitator but also 
by the nationalistic malcontent. 



MONARCHY 121 

The last major effort to transform a tyrant, a military leader as well 
as a politician, into a monarch was made in the case of Napoleon Bona- 
parte. Napoleon I became a sort of republican president — "consul" — 
first for a limited number of years, then for lifetime, and finally his 
power was extended, after the proclamation of France as an imperial 
monarchy, to his son and heir. Shortly, he became a monarch. Napoleon 
III and Achmed Zogu (Zog I) had similar careers. A crown had also 
been offered to Oliver Cromwell and Dr. Voldemaras of Lithuania, to 
Yiian-Shi-Kai, and Iturbide. 113 

Napoleon, in spite of his imperial title, lacked the most vital char- 
acteristics of a European monarch ; he neither possessed a great dynastic 
name, nor was he a relative of any of the other ruling dynasties. His 
father was an Italian lawyer of doubtful nobility in Ajaccio,* the capital 
of the most disrespectable island in the Mediterranean, famous for its 
bandits, cutthroats, and the practice of the vendetta. Napoleon could 
not "relax" as a Habsburg, a Bourbon, or even a Medici. He had to 
engrave his name in the great book of history and this dictatorial pastime 
of engraving is usually only accomplished with blood and tears. Neither 
respected nor respectable on account of his revolutionary background, 
he was forced to impress his fellow rulers and neighboring nations with 
triumphal successes; if they couldn't respect him at least they learned 
to fear him. 

He had to wage the total war of Jacobine tradition based on the levie- 
en-masse. Not being related to the large family of European monarchs, 
he also continued the practices of the First French Republic by annex- 
ing neighboring countries en bloc and incorporating them into his empire 
or degrading them to vassal states and filling their vacant thrones with 
obedient relatives. These wholesale annexations as well as the con- 
tinuation of total warfare — war in earnest — indicated that he was 
not willing to play the game. The European rulers soon were in utter 
confusion because such a breach of rules and usages had not happened 
since the days of Genghis-Khan and Tamerlane. Dictated peace treaties 
were a novelty and we have mentioned the fact before that between a.d. 
900 and the advent of Napoleon no European monarchy had been wiped 
off the map, no European dynasty had become homeless on account of 
a foreign invasion. 

There is still the case of Poland. Poland vanished owing to successive 



* See Chateaubriand's Mimoirs d'Outretombe, who is very much convinced of Napo- 
leon's aristocratic background. 



122 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

armed interventions and due to the fact that this country had committed 
the folly of becoming an aristocratic republic whose king was elected 
by the Diet. Thus the Polish kings had frequently no connections with the 
other ruling families of Europe and this is also the reason why the 
neighboring countries — Prussia, Austria, Russia — did not have the 
slightest hesitation to carve up this unfortunate country which had 
always prided itself to be a Rzeczpospolita, a "republic."* The history 
of the decline of Poland begins soon after the moment when this country 
had left the path of hereditary monarchy. We see a short-lived renais- 
sance under Jan III Sobieski, but the introduction of the liberum "veto" 
marks the end of Polish glory and independence.** 

This does not imply that republican tendencies and downright republi- 
canism are necessarily degenerate forms of government. It is nevertheless 
true that no country ever became a republic because it was too wealthy, 
too healthy, too happy, or too strong. All European republics originated 
either as a result of a movement for national independence and the 
acceptance of a republican form of government was then due to the lack 
of a pretender, or, the fall of monarchy was due to despair, hunger, 
bankruptcy, military defeat, corruption, invasion. Europe's rise is written 
in the terms of Christianity and Monarchy, Europe's decay in the terms 
of Republicanism, "Progressivism," and Godlessness. 

The European monarchs, who never loved nor liked the Corsican 
usurper, decided finally, in order to save their skins, that Napoleon had 
to be "appeased." The presence of a crowned tyrant in Europe put an 
almost intolerable strain on every country, a strain not only material 
but also moral on account of the necessary imitation of French revolu- 
tionary methods. Every totalitarian regime since has forced most if not 
all the European countries to take countermeasures which led to a 
disastrous multiplication of totalitarian counterideas. If one part of the 
European body is diseased all the rest will suffer; and sometimes it 
may be the antitoxin which is more fatal than the poison itself.*** 

The only way out was to transform the tyrant into a real king, i.e., to 
make him a relative of his royal colleagues. And this is exactly what 



♦Rather typical is the Polish proverb: "Cudzych krolow gromid, a grozic swojemu" — 
"Subjugate foreign kings and defy your own!" It breathes a thoroughly "whiggish" 
spirit. 

** Frederick II of Prussia refers to Poland in his Political Testament (1768) as a 
Ripublique. 

***The years 1917, 1922, 1923 mark the last stages of this drama. 



MONARCHY 123 

happened. The daughter of the Austrian Emperor (a few years ago still 
Holy Roman Emperor) was married to the usurper. But the monarchs 
soon became aware of the fact that they had become the victims of mis- 
calculation. Napoleon did not reform. He carried the war as far as the 
Sarmatian plains, destroyed myriads of human lives and so still yielded 
to his insatiable ambitions. It was evident by now that he would never 
become a genuine monarch. A new coalition between the Continental 
rulers and the British moneyed aristocracy first deprived him of his 
Empire. After a renewed attempt on his part to behave like an irrespon- 
sible politician and general, the powers of the coalition stopped treating 
him as a monarch and interned him on an African island. Thus ended 
one of the most sanguinary episodes in European history. 

The Napoleonic wars were concluded by the Congress of Vienna. The 
French delegates were treated as friends, colleagues, and gentlemen. All 
thrones were restored to their former owners (with the exception of the 
temporal powers of the German Archbishops) and France was given new 
borders which left her slightly larger than before the beginning of the 
outbreak of the Revolution.* The blame for the terrific bloodshed fell 
neither on the French people nor on the legitimate dynasty ; the twenty- 
three years of terrible wars were looked upon as a series of acts of folly, 
as deplorable aberrations which one had better forget and forgive. This 
was the same spirit as expressed in the preamble of the Treaty of West- 
phalia (1648) which concluded the Thirty Years' War and runs as 
follows : 

"The hostilities that have taken place from the beginning of the late 
disturbances in any place of whatsoever kind, by one side or the other, 
shall be forgotten and forgiven, so that neither party shall cherish enmity 
or hatred against, nor molest or injure the other for any cause 
whatsoever." 

Obviously the progressive twentieth century was still some way off. 

But the spirit of nationalism and ochlocracy, of militarism and uni- 
formism unfortunately survived. The French levee-en-masse was an- 
swered by a Prussian levee-en-masse and the government of Berlin showed 
little inclination to get rid of that evil institution. The Conservatives 
(like Metternich) persecuted the nationalist movement bitterly, but with- 
out success. The bourgeoisie on the Continent had not yet reached the 
full victory. It was not yet a dominating class and therefore nobody 
dreamed of considering nationalism as a movement of the "Right." There 



* Guglielmo Ferrero in his The Reconstruction of Europe, New York, 1941, makes a 
very strong point of this fact. 



124 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

was the closest cooperation in the common fight of "democratic" national- 
ists and nationalistic "democrats" against the supranational Church and 
the institution of international monarchy. 

On the surface there was a strong monarchical, rightist, and "medieval- 
ist" reaction to be felt all over Europe; Chateaubriand, de Maistre, de 
Bonald, Schlegel, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Zacharias Werner, Clemens Bren- 
tano, the brothers Stolberg and Manzoni wrote their great works within 
this movement. Romanticism east of the Rhine was truly diversitarian 
and romantic. A wave of conversions swept over the Continent and the 
Tractarian movement in England was not far off. The Church seemed to 
regain her old influence. Yet, under the surface, the nationalists of the 
herdist pattern would render all efforts of the spiritual-intellectual elite 
illusory. The vast masses of Slav inhabitants of the East European plains 
began to raise their voices in favor of a union. And from the north- 
western plains and islands another monster raised its head, another 
phenomenon bound to change the face of the earth — the Industrial 
Revolution. While Kaspar David Friedrich and Kriehuber painted moun- 
tain scenes and Schwind and Ludwig Richter dwelt on the subtle lore of 
small German towns, tall chimneys and great machines, heralding the 
advent of another scourge, made their appearance ; while poets, painters, 
and princes spoke in glowing terms of the coming New Middle Ages a 
German of Jewish descent, horrified and bewildered by the spectacle of 
British industrialism, first conceived the ideas which a few years later 
led to the publication of the "Communist Manifesto." The inexorable 
march of events could not be stopped by a few Men pensants ; it took 
another one hundred years to teach mankind the appreciation of the 
proverb that God's mills grind slowly but with firmness and precision. 
The reductio ad absurdum alone could bring about the showdown of the 
ideas of the Great Revolt of the herdists. 

We have gone "out of our way" in order to defend monarchy merely 
because we think that this form of government had either been unneces- 
sarily abused in America or often been linked to its very opposite: 
plebiscitarian dictatorship. We are convinced that christian, monarchical 
forms of government belong, like the republic, to the good forms of 
government. Monarchies may not only survive the present cataclysm but 
may even increase in number and it is therefore necessary that Americans 
have an inner understanding for that political system (which does cer- 
tainly not imply that they should copy it) . European, Catholic monarch- 



MONARCHY 125 

ists profess this political conviction for very similar reasons as American 
Catholics voice their preference for the Republic; both Catholic camps 
see in these systems a (relative) guarantee for personal liberty, for the 
security of the Church, for legitimacy and justice (juridical and social), 
for international understanding. 

It is naturally, also equally necessary that Europeans in general and 
European Catholics in particular arrive at a greater and better under- 
standing of the principles and foundations of the American Republic. As 
long as many Americans view monarchy from the angle of S. Oglow's 
humorous "Little King" and Europeans have a vision of the United 
States as "another Soviet-Union" with a stock exchange instead of a 
Kremlin, no real mutual understanding and affection is possible. And 
"affection," not just interest mixed with curiosity, is an iron necessity 
for every peace. Pax est amor. 



II 

THE AGE OF PARLIAMENTARIANISM 
AND REPUBLICANISM 



"Europe has become the apostle of her own apostasy." 
— Douglas Jerrold, England. 

The headway which egalitarianism and identitarianism made after the 
revolution of 1830 and 1848 is intimately connected with the rapid in- 
crease in importance of two geographical-social units. Europe of the 
nineteenth and the beginning twentieth century is a continent ruled by 
money, and money comes from the rich plains (regardless whether they 
are industrial or agricultural) and the cities. 

To most Americans mountains are an "exceptional" geographic forma- 
tion, but a look at the physical map of Europe will show them that this 
is not so on the old continent. There is only one large plain spreading 
from northern France across the Low Countries, northern Germany and 
Poland to Russia, a plain which is hardly interrupted by the low Ural 
mountains and which only ends at the Hindukush and the hilly lands 
behind Lake Baikal. Historical Europe on the other hand is mountainous. 
The Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, Greeks, Turks, Bulgarians, Alba- 
nians, Croatians, Serbs, Slovenes, the Slovaks and the Austrians, the Swiss, 
the Norwegians and the Icelanders, the Scots and the Welsh, half the 
Rumanians and Ruthenians, the Turks, the South Germans, the Sudeten 
Germans and the South French are either living in mountains or at least 
in very hilly countries. Many people see the "real" Europeans in these 
moutaineers. In these parts of the world traditions have been better pre- 
served ; patriarchalism, piety, loyalty, altruism — all the truly "romantic" 
virtues are here more at home than in the progressive plains. Other mani- 
festations, such as the blood feud, also exist. Of course, the mountains are 

126 



PARLIAMENTARIANISM AND REPUBLICANISM 127 

poor and bravery alone does not secure collective political influence. 
Thanks to the greater resources of the plains the mountaineers were 
always defeated in the long run but they regularly revenged themselves 
by producing a proportionately large number of political and military 
leaders.* 

Mountain culture is not "advanced." It is nevertheless aristocratic and 
"democratic" (demophil) at the same time. It is patriarchal by nature 
and we have mentioned the fact before, that serfdom practically never 
existed among the mountaineers. The mountains were essentially free. 
"Freedom thrives in the mountains," Schiller exclaims justly. Yet it is 
also interesting to see how violently the mountain peasant was attacked 
by the urban writers of the second half of the nineteenth century, at- 
tacked and vilified for his loyalty to traditions. Having no social griev- 
ances (lack of large estates) he was the very despair of urban, leftist 
agitators. 

The thwarted intellectuals, slaving in the gigantic cities under heaviest 
pressure, developed often an almost sinister grudge against the mountains 
and the snow-covered peaks; he at least considered himself to be a 
"modern" while the mountaineer dwelt in darkest superstition.** Yet the 
mountaineer always despised the people from the plains and the large 
cities and regarded them as miserable wretches, as proletarians and col- 
lectivized rabble, with an utter lack of personality. 115 

The age of the rule of the plains and the cities, which put an end to 
the rule of the mountains and castles, was indeed the beginning of the 
decline of Europe. The association of Berlin with Moscow, of nationalism 
with socialism, was, even in a geographical sense, a league of monotony 
against diversity. 

It must be admitted though that there is a great strength in the collec- 



* Of the better known political and military leaders of the past 400 years the follow- 
ing came from the mountains: Stalin, Mussolini, Napoleon, Nicholas Horthy, Dollfuss, 
Henry IV of Navarre, the Counts of Habsburg and of Savoy, General Franco, Mustapha 
Kemal, Salazar, Metaxas, Kondylis, Maniu, Lloyd-George, Ramsay MacDonald, Foch, 
Joffre, Count Bethlen, Venizelos, and others. 

** Yet we can observe from time to time the typical bourgeois veneration and adora- 
tion of the peasant and mainly of the mountaineer. The Austrian and South German 
city dweller will don a peasant costume when he spends his summer vacation in the 
mountains. In the past ten to twenty years a growing feeling of helplessness, despair, and 
inferiority can be observed among the urbanites which resulted in different movements 
promoting the return to the land. Today the cities (exposed to bombings, famines, 
diseases, etc.) are already in a retrograde development which is often symbolically ex- 
pressed by a "ruralization" of their character. Thirty years ago hardly anybody would 
have thought to dress in Vienna like a Tyrolean shepherd or a Styrian gamekeeper, yet 
today the situation has materially changed and the rural influence is quite considerable. 



128 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

tive onslaught of the people of the plains — from a military, political, and 
economic point of view. The first half of the nineteenth century produced 
the most spectacular victories of the French arms, the second half the 
victories of Prussia and of the Germanies led by Prussia. The great 
soldiers of the sixteenth and seventeenth century were the Spaniards and 
the Swiss, but technical civilization and industrial progress necessitated 
a soldier with a minimum of personal initiative and a maximum of 
obedience, cooperative spirit and lack of originality. The virtues of the 
sixteenth-century soldier are still necessary prerequisites of alpine war- 
fare, but for the war in the plains — "total" wars and not "little wars" 
(guerrilla) — they are often out of date. In the mountains a soldier has to 
climb, to fight, to think, to decide. In the plains officers used to ride at 
the head of their troops and directed the solidly advancing carres with 
stentorial commands. Nothing of that kind is possible in the mountains 
where personal initiative is of greater importance than mere discipline 
and drill;* even modern warfare in these parts is still individualized and 
numbers play a less important role than in the Lowlands. 

Today it seems that European culture and civilization, once conceived 
and born in the craggy hills of Crete, Greece, and the Apennines, will be 
drowned in the monotonous, muddy plains between Paris and Moscow. 

The second half of the nineteenth century sees an acceleration in the 
process of democratization, nationalization, centralization, and uniform- 
ization in all regions of Europe. The demand for a general ochlocratic 
franchise comes to the fore as the synthesis of Luther's superstitious 
belief in the perspicacity and intelligence of the average man (reading 
his Bible) and Rousseau's assertion that man is by nature good. It was 
impossible to resist the demands for political control on the part of the 
masses, who consisted admittedly of virtuous master minds. 

The risorgimento in the political sense was probably a boon to Italy, 
but from a cultural point of view it was fatal because it extinguished the 
many little suns which, in preceding centuries, had given to Italy her 
great variety of cultural expressions so essential to the grandeur of the 
Italian past. Something similar happened also in the Germanies, but this 
process in the other half of the former Holy Roman Empire will be 
treated separately. 

Uniformism had created the demand that all people with an identical 



* This explains the successes of the Serb Chetnitzi against German occupation troops. 



PARLIAMENTARIANISM AND REPUBLICANISM 129 

or similar literary language should draw together in common political 
units. 116 Yet literary languages are usually artificial creations, coined by 
certain masters at a given moment in history and accepted by the upper 
classes. The English-speaking reader should bear in mind that the literary 
languages of the European continent are not of aristocratic or royal 
mark. "The King's English" has no equivalent either in the Germanic 
countries nor in the Mediterranean area. It usually is the upper bour- 
geoisie who speaks the literary, i.e., the artificially standardized lan- 
guage, with the greatest perfection, while there is often a "low-class" 
dialectical strain in the idiom of the nobility and even royalty.* The 
Empress Maria Theresa spoke broadest Viennese, and this local dialect 
continued to be used by the Emperors of Austria until 1848.** The late 
King of Saxony repeatedly used the Saxonian dialect, and argot expres- 
sions are far more widespread in aristocratic circles around Paris and 
Budapest than in the haute bourgeoisie, which always prided itself on a 
strongly standardized language, which is nothing else but an intranational 
Esperanto (understood and spoken everywhere inside the nation).*** 

Artificial languages are far more collective — they comprise more 
people — than local dialects. But the artificial language often lacks char- 
acter and originality. It is the urban, commercial spirit of the middle 
classes which demands uniformity for business purposes and has already 
killed many a truly living language in order to supplant it by an inter- 



*The Swiss bourgeoisie was always an exception. Schwytzerdutsch was always spoken 
by Swiss "society" and literary German was only used in conversation with foreigners. 
It would sound extremely genteel to speak the literary language among the Swiss Ger- 
mans. This is not true of Austria. Pangermanism had therefore an appeal for certain 
Austrians, none for the Swiss. 

** The Emperor Francis Joseph who ascended the throne 11 years after Queen Victoria 
and died IS years later than the British ruler was, like her, aristocratic in character but 
bourgeois in his tastes. The rule of these two monarchs saw the spectacular rise of the 
bourgeoisie. 

*** All leftists (with the paradoxical exception of the Spanish leftists) had always a 
teeth-gnashing hatred for dialectical differences because these disturbed the herdist uni- 
formity to which they were all instinctively devoted. Evelyn M. Acomb writes in her 
scholarly work "The French Laic Laws (1879-1889)": They (the anticlericals) held that 
differences in religion would only divide citizens, who should be imbued with the sense 
of "union, concord, and fraternity which ought to exist between the children of the 
mere-patrie." They attacked the religious orders for not obeying the laws, for trying to 
elude military service, and for encouraging local dialects. 

It is universally agreed in all the reports of academy inspectors that wherever a lan- 
guage other than French is spoken, whether it is a true language like the Breton or a 
simple patois, in all these districts, the religious orders, supported by the clergy, who 
insist that the catechism should be learned in patois, exert all their efforts to prevent the 
French language from being used. (Journal Officiel de la Republique Frangaise. May 
26, pp. S690-5691.) 



130 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

national (or rather intertribal) jargon. Hebrew was displaced about 300 
years before the birth of our Lord by the Aramaic slang of Syrian 
traders, spoken between Alexandria and Babylon. 

The nineteenth or twentieth century nationalist of either the "demo- 
cratic" or socialist pattern would have hardly consented to the exhorta- 
tion of St. Stephen, King of Hungary, who said to his sons: "Unius 
linguae uniusque moris regnum imbecille et fragile est."* It is the urban 
middle class which became the protagonist for the national state with 
one languge, one law, one independent church and left its deadly cen- 
tralism all over the Old World between Calais and Vladivostok. 

This is the reason why the middle-class revolutions of 1848 in Berlin, 
Italy, Vienna, Baden, Prague, Munich, and Pesth had not only an 
ochlocratic but also a strongly nationalistic character. Pan-Italism, Pan- 
Germanism and the weirdest growth of all, Pan-Slavism, revolted against 
the supranational monarchy. The endless, monotonous plains of eastern 
Europe had accepted with almost Asiatic fervor the gospel of a gigantic 
unification preached for the first time by Jan Kollar, a Lutheran Slovak 
minister in Magyar-German Pesth. Pan-Slavism differed from the two 
other isms inasmuch as it wanted to unite not one nation, but a whole 
family of nations, who show as many differences as the Icelanders from 
the Tyroleans or the English from the East Prussians. Pan-Latinism or 
Pan-Teutonism have not yet made their appearance on the political stage 
and they probably never will. Yet what the disciples of these Panisms 
wanted was a vastly simplified Europe, consisting of three or four states, 
all uniform, all "democratically" governed, a bad imitation of the Amer- 
ican Middle West, with about ISO million "customers" each, run by 
lawyers, journalists, businessmen, and teachers of gymnastics. 

Gymnastic teachers were not unimportant; the gymnastic leagues of 
central and eastern Europe wielded great political power. Supported by 
the bourgeoisie (and even the lower classes) they were the main carriers 
of Pan-Slavism and Pan-Germanism. Their performances in mass drill, 
their semimilitary maneuvers, their worship of health, discipline, and 
co-ordination, and finally their anticlericalism of varying degree, made 
them heralds as well as executors of a mass age.** The Sokol ("Falcon") 



* "A country of only one language and one custom is foolish and fragile." 
** Later we see "Counter Leagues," i.e., Catholic as well as Socialist Gymnastic 
Leagues. The Socialists did finally everything in their power to make good use of the 
collectivizing effects of sports and gymnastics — inside and outside of Russia. In all 
these Leagues the emphasis was always put on the subordination of the individual under 
the whole. Their influence and importance can never be overrated and it is surprising 



PARLIAMENTARIANISM AND REPUBLICANISM 131 

and Orel ("Eagle") organizations among the Slavs, the numerous gym- 
nastic leagues among the Teutons — mainly the Austrian, Moravian, and 
Bohemian Germans — are typical for these various movements with 
parallel goals. Nevertheless their purpose was not primarily a military 
one. Their main objective was rather of a psychological nature. The spec- 
tacular collective displays organized on a scale only surpassed by the 
parades of the National Socialists in Nuremberg, served the feeling of 
collective might and a "belonging together." The numerous men's glee 
clubs, so widespread among German and Slav nationalists, had a similar 
purpose. Community singing was also one of the strongest magnetic fea- 
tures of the Lutheran Reformation.* It is not surprising that these 
gymnastic leagues featuring a definite Weltanschauung had a deep polit- 
ical influence mainly on the lower middle class. They started out featur- 
ing certain liberal tendencies. This liberalism is still apparent in the 
writing of the Turnvater Jahn, the founder of the German Gymnastic 
Leagues. In the thirties of this century their Austrian groups (Deutscher 
Turnverein, featuring an emblem remarkably like the Swastika) became 
violently national socialistic and dropped the liberal ideas. It is no exag- 
geration to say that while the Slav gymnastic leagues (the "Sokols")** 
were partly responsible for the breaking up of the Austro-Hungarian 
Monarchy, the Deutscher Turnverein (German Gymnastic League) had 
a lion share in the annexation of Austria. 

Both risorgimentos — the Italian and the German — were accompanied 
by two strange and disquieting phenomena. Neither movement was 
carried primarily by a royal or imperial house. Two great parliamen- 
tarian and one popular leader — Bismarck, Cavour, and Garibaldi — 



that no serious treatise has been written about them. (They were mentioned though in 
Peter Viereck's 'Metapolitics.) 

* "Viel mehr wurden hinubergesungen als hinubergepredigt," did the Catholics 
complain. 

** The Czechoslovak Republic, Yugoslavia and even Poland showed great recognition 
for the work of the Sokols after their establishment as independent states. Czecho- 
slovakia featured the founder of the Sokols on their stamps and the Sokol-slet's 
(Falconflights: mass meetings and mass performances) were always memorable events. 
Yugoslavia celebrated the great slets with a special issue of her stamps. The Czechs 
also unofficially called some of their bank notes "Sokols." 

The founder of the Sokols, Miroslav Tyr5, was, needless to say, a great admirer of 
Taine, a violent evolutionist and an enthusiastic monist preaching an odd political 
biologism, spiced with a romantic anticlericalism and anti-Habsburgism. His vistas were 
largely "Nazi" which did not prevent the invading Nazi hords from suppressing the 
Sokols. 



132 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

were the men who really did the job, not their royal masters. On account 
of these two large scale unifications we behold many rulers deprived of 
their thrones, either by sheer force or due to the revolutionary coopera- 
tion of their subjects. The Kings of Hanover and the Two Sicilies, the 
grand dukes of Tuscany and Hesse-Nassau had to flee from their coun- 
tries just as in Napoleonic times. 

Prussia again played with the idea of incorporating Saxony, yet this 
German kingdom escaped its fate the second time since the Congress of 
Vienna, as by a miracle. 

But the fact that other legitimate European rulers were accessories to 
these actions, so alien to their own as well as to the Christian European 
tradition, indicates the beginning of the end for the very institution of 
supranational monarchy in the Eastern Hemisphere. Once the respect for 
rights and laws was broken nature took its course. Seventy years ago the 
ignorant mob howled triumphantly when the dukes and kings packed 
their bags and fled from their homelands; today it is the burgher, the 
peasant, the worker who is driven out by the conquerors and is not even 
permitted to take his tools or his savings with him as in the case of 
vanquished Poland. The nations of Europe will have ample opportunity 
to think with nostalgia of the days when monarch fought against monarch 
and not nation against nation, and yet it is without doubt the monarchs 
who were the accessories of nationalistic mass sentiment, who dug their 
own graves and maybe even those of their subjects. 

There is also another aspect of nineteenth-century nationalism of 
greater importance and gravity. The national collectivism of that period, 
with a steadily increasing statism lurking around the corner, persuaded 
the forlorn and helpless individual that he is merely the part of a whole. 
Seventeenth-century pantheism already had affirmed that we and the 
universe are a "part" of God. Spinoza no less than Calvin with his pre- 
destination and denial of free will had blazed the trail leading to an 
integral depreciation of person and personality. Now we see the urban 
slave depressed by his inferiority, partly real and partly imaginary, 
clamoring for a God or some "divine corporation" whose part he could 
be and whose divine essence he could share. People begin now to be 
primarily members of a nation, a class, a political party, and many or- 
ganized their lives accordingly. We see no longer men and women giving 
solemn oaths of loyalty to a ruler, an order, a spiritual head, as in the 
days of old. They cease to serve according to their own free will and 
choice because they are now under the pressure of a powerful collective, 



PARLIAMENTARIANISM AND REPUBLICANISM 133 

horizontal, or vertical stratification of society which forces them to a 
blind, instinctive, and often unreasonable homage to a group interest. 
Whosoever will not submit to the group discipline, does not yield to the 
group authority or dares to separate himself from the "group soul," is 
considered a traitor. 

In the Middle Ages people were born and baptized into the Church. 
But the Church was the corpus mysticum and it depended upon one's 
own free will whether one wanted to be a living or a dead member of the 
Mystical Body of Christ. The cry "traitor" was only raised against those 
who broke the solemn oath of allegiance, not those who chose to go ways 
different from their status of birth. The Connetable Charles de Bourbon 
who served with Charles V, or Marshal Moritz of Saxony, the great 
general under Louis XV were hardly considered to be traitors. Soldiers 
picked out the countries they wanted to serve. Prospective monks chose 
their orders. There were no "traitors to the proletariat" or "traitors to 
democracy." Today we live in an age of increased predestination and de- 
creased free will, where Calvin, Freud, Marx, Luther, Darwin, Dewey, 
and the host of racial biologists have layed down the inexorable laws of 
anthropological, religious, psychological, environmental, and sociological 
determinism with no hope for escape} 17 We are merely exhorted to make 
a virtue out of necessity and to be loyal to our prison and prisoners. 
Every attempt from our side to escape the artificial shell or to use our 
dormant remainders of free will to destroy the chains is branded as 
treason and punished accordingly by State or Society or even by 
both. 

Thus, in the second half of the nineteenth century we see the crowned 
heads of Europe, who should have been inspired to work for the summum 
bonum of their respective nations, merely executing the will of the Herd 
like the last, sordid politician in an ochlocracy, fawning for popularity. 
We know only too well that the General Will and the General Good are 
not the same, that there is sometimes even between the seemingly obvious 
general good and the eternal principles of justice and equity an abyss 
that cannot be overbridged; and cleavages between the local good and 
the general good are equally frequent. But true ochlocracy, based on gen- 
uine majority rule, will always put the general good before the local one. 
("Happiness for the greatest number") The principle Gemeinnutz geht 
vor Eigennutz, engraved on the German coins, sounds very altruistic, but 
carried to the last, logical consequence it leads to the adoration of the 
ant heap and the contempt for the person. 



134 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

Socialism,* largely an answer to the sins of "liberal" capitalism, 
belongs to the same category of herdist collectivism, this time on a social 
rather than geographical basis. 11 * (There is a third herdism in 
biologicis and numerous combinations between the three fundamental 
manifestations. ) ** 

Yet it must be clearly understood that there is no real enmity between 
capitalism and socialism, which after all is only a capitalism oj the 
etatistic brand. The normal tendency in the development oj capitalism 
is toward socialism. Real socialism merely wants to speed up the life 
process of capitalism which is the concentration of wealth and means of 
production in fewer and fewer hands, until finally every cent in the coun- 
try is controlled by a single person. Elections in that theoretical capital- 
istic "democracy" of the final stage merely mean that all employees of 
Mr. XY, the final capitalist, the only employer, go to the polls. Mr. XY 
is by that time already the invisible dictator of the country in question, 
and State and "Society" are one. Mr. XY, without personally disposing 
all the time or all his money, controls nevertheless every penny, and 
probably derives as much satisfaction from his illimited power as (let 
us say) the secretary of the Communist Party in the Communist State, 
or perhaps as may be the case with even more benevolent "leaders" of the 
Soviet State of tomorrow. Different forces as well as "misguided" socialist 
tendencies act as breaks against the real socialist interest of bigger and 
better capitalism. Once all financial power is in the hands of one person 
and this person assumes the highest political office, the Socialist State 
stands already in its final form; it only needs a little repainting but no 
transforming. Under such circumstances — as in every totalitarian state — 
money and power, power and money become one and the same thing.*** 
If the monopolistic capitalist wants to eat in a restaurant he can do so 
without paying because the restaurant is his. The totalitarian, communist 
dictator can feed equally without paying cash in his monolithic state 
where money, power, belief, society, government have been unified at the 



* Socialism demanded labor's access to a machine to be owned by itself, and passed 
over the fact that all that made such propaganda plausible was that ownership of the 
worker had already passed to the machine (James N. Wood, Democracy and the Will 
to Power, p. 124). 

** It must be kept in mind that there is no such thing as Catholic or Christian collec- 
tivism. Christianity ties man primarily to God and secondarily to his fellow man (in 
whom he does not like himself, but God and God's image). True religion is always 
"vertical" and not "horizontal." 

*** This would be possible in a State without social checks, as, for instance, Bolivia, 
which is largely owned by Senor Patino. 



PARLIAMENTARIANISM AND REPUBLICANISM 135 

expense of the individual personality. Thus we see capitalism and social- 
ism advocating the ant-heap State (or Society) in an unholy union with 
equal fervor. 

But often we see socialistic party organizations assuming a compara- 
tively medieval attitude by doing everything in their power to thwart 
the centralizing efforts of monopolistic capitalism. Socialists frequently 
advocated distribution of wealth by increased taxation and antitrust 
laws. This, for their unorthodox attitude, can only be explained by their 
desire to protect their political organizations (for which they care more 
than for abstract ideas) against the combined attack of State plus 
Money, a combination they call for reasons unknown "Fascism."* We 
have therefore to see in the struggle between socialism and capitalism 
(i.e., between state capitalism and private capitalism) statism and capi- 
talism, nationalism and herdist democratism, socialism and statism, 
nazism and bolshevism, nationalism and socialism, a whole series of 
bogus issues which are fought with a bitterness worthy of a better cause. 
Yet the hatred and the ferocity in this struggle is natural and character- 
istic for every fratricidal warfare. In such a strife no pardon can be 
given because the different sides consider each other to be "traitors" in 
the sacred race for identity and the construction of the universal ant 
heap. Their common enemy was the past, the great tradition, the Church 
with her aspects of hierarchy and otherworldliness, her subtle affinities 
with patriarchalism and monarchy, her spirituality and deeply seated 
skepticism toward the modern world. There was to all practical purposes 
no "new-fangled" modern idea from labor conditions to conscription,** 
from militarism to socialism, from continental liberalism to religious 
modernism which the Popes had not criticized in sharp, uncompromising 
terms.*** 



* Mr. Lewis of the C.I.O., advocating the candidacy of Mr. Willkie, who was acclaimed 
by American Capital, assumed a truly and genuinely socialistic attitude. There is noth- 
ing more antisocialistic than the protection of a multitude of small enterprises. 

** Conscription and militarism were vigorously attacked by Leo XIII. Though never 
"pacifist" in the Leftish sense and respecting the good soldier, the Church always dis- 
liked militarism and the "armed horde." The two greatest Catholic saints — St. Francis 
of Assisi and St. Ignatius — were soldiers before their call, but the picture of the 
"armed industrialist" in his far distance bomber has often little to do with the idea 
of the miles Christianas. 

*** It was evident from the beginning that a great political (not necessarily spiritual) 
defeat of the church would eliminate the importance of the common great enemy and 
thus inaugurate a period of endless mutual strife between the modern heresies. The 
years 1847, 1860, 1866, 1870, 1898, and 1918 were milestones of ecclesiastic defeat which 
opened the road to the Great Massacre. 



136 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

At the height of the socialist agitation there arose a doctrine which 
seemingly erected a materialist barrier against herdism; the theory of 
evolution. 119 

Evolution itself, as well as the broader interest for biology which en- 
sued from it, led to the tentative establishment of racialist theories. These 
were first of all welcomed in aristocratic quarters that are always keen on 
genealogy, thankful for every vindication of their hard-pressed caste, and 
overjoyous at a defense based not on sentimental but on "scientific" 
grounds. The fact that the French aristocracy considers itself to be 
largely of Frankish, i.e., Nordic, origin led Count Gobineau to his 
apologia of the Nordic Race which caused such havoc in many a Ger- 
manic, British, and American brain from Atlanta, Georgia, to Riga, 
Livonia. 

The theory of Evolution brought only temporary relief to the badly 
harassed aristocracy of Europe. It is more important to remember that 
it gave a new impetus to materialism, and that while weakening the 
Christian tradition even further in the minds of many it gave birth to a 
new type of group consciousness, thus increasing the already virulent 
herd spirit. The worship of the sciences became more intensive and the 
mobs waited eagerly for new gospels to emerge from the laboratories. 
The new "scientific" discoveries were preached with furor and fervor 
and soon there was a veritable persecution of true Christians going on in 
intellectual as well as popular circles. 120 

The effect of Evolutionism upon the European mind was not homo- 
geneous. Racialism became only strong and violent in the twentieth cen- 
tury; herdism of that type was brought in relation to small, identical 
biological groups with common characteristics. The herdists of the nine- 
teenth century made a different use of this theory ; they enlarged human- 
ity by including the animals and Darwin's assertion that the brain of an 
ant is the most wonderful particle of the world, more wonderful perhaps 
than the human brain, is characteristic for the trend of the time. 121 The 
ants had their eulogy written in the early twentieth century by Maurice 
Maeterlinck, and Waldemar Bonsels delighted in sentimental tales about 
the life of the bees (Die Biene Maja). But great savants like Father 
Wasmann, S.J., exploded the myth of the "intelligence" of these ex- 
tremely uniformistic insects who live in strict, unvarying discipline. 122 

The theory of evolution was also a powerful attack against free will 
and a further step toward determinism which marks so strongly the 



PARLIAMENTARIANISM AND REPUBLICANISM 137 

progressive ideas of western civilization with their false and deceptive 
outcry for "liberty." 123 

Modern slavery indeed reached its zenith in the modern city 124 which 
is so hostile to true personality. 125 The earning of a livelihood under 
most humiliating and monotonous conditions, often under the dictator- 
ship of technology, the tyranny of the watch, the increased control by 
the state, which in the urban areas is far more effective and efficient than 
in rural areas, resulted in the slow and painful birth of a new man who 
was a most ideal material for politicians, generals, dictators, 126 newspaper 
editors, and traffic cops. Yet his full maturity for the job of total servi- 
tude was not reached before the First Great War, one of the most 
sanguinary blunders in modern history. 127 

Nietzsche foresaw this development when he wrote in his Der Wille 
zur Macht hoping at least for a benevolent and worthy, not a malicious 
and ochlocratic tyrant: 

A man who has preserved a strong will combined with wide knowledge 
has now greater chances than ever. Servile obedience (Dressierbarkeit) has 
enormously increased in democratic Europe; human beings who adapt them- 
selves easily and are submissive constitute the rule; the result is an animal 
of the herd, even if quite intelligent. Whoever is able to rule finds a great 
mass of those who are ready to serve. 

"Wide knowledge," being the survival of an intellectual and aristocratic 
age, could easily be dispensed with. Volcanic emotion is all that is nec- 
essary for the mob master's sordid role. 



Ill 

WORLD WAR I 



Austria-Hungary remains the cornerstone of Europe. 
— Leroy-Beaulieu, in 1903. 

By 1914 we see two different types of monarchies in Europe. In some 
countries the king or emperor overshadows the parliament, in others 
again the parliament is in full control of the government and the crowned 
sovereign merely functions as a representative of the nation or as symbol 
of the state. These monarchies were to all practical purposes republics; 
some of them had a democratic, some an aristocratic or plutocratic char- 
acter. It is important to note that it was not always the constitution 
which curtailed the rights and prerogatives of the monarch, but rather 
practice and usage. The Swedish constitution, for instance, gives more 
rights and powers to the king than the Belgian charter, but the king of 
the Belgians has far greater influence over the state affairs of his country 
and there is no doubt that he was, during the last war, the virtual dic- 
tator of his diminished realm. 

The decline of the influence of monarchs was accompanied by the 
decline of the influence of the Catholic Church. 128 The male supremacy 
was challenged in public life and it became evident that kings, Popes, 
emperors, fathers, priests were facing bad times in Europe, and God 
Himself was ignored. France had become a republic in 1870, Portugal fol- 
lowed in 1910, China, the oldest monarchy in the world on the other end 
of the Eurasian continent, became a republic in 1912, and the ceaselessly 
increasing power of the American republic threw long shadows over 
Europe.* The twilight of the institution of monarchy in Europe was soon 
at hand. 



* The general European interpretation of the American political traditions and values 
was, needless to say, far off the mark. 

138 



WORLD WAR I 139 

The moral and political prestige of the Church reached an all time 
low. 129 Even in "Catholic" countries her power amounted to almost 
nothing. France and Portugal had expelled most of the orders. "Free- 
thinkers" not only guided the political destinies of these two republics 
but they also ruled in Italy and directed Spanish political life. The king- 
dom of Ferdinand and Isabel was actually governed by the liberal branch 
of the Bourbons while the conservative, Carlist branch lived in exile. 
The Second German Reich treated Catholics more favorably than France, 
inasmuch as it had diplomatic relations with the Vatican,* gave full 
financial support to the Church and had furthermore only one single 
order proscribed.** The Church in France went through a miserable 
period of transition as a mere association cultuelle, sustained by the char- 
itable gifts of the faithful. It is true that France became in course of 
time rather lax in the enforcement of her anti-Catholic laws, but priests 
were always denied the right to vote, although in a truly egalitarian 
spirit they were made to fight in the army. 

Even Austria-Hungary was not a model Catholic state if one considers 
the fact that the Emperor-King Francis Joseph forced his officers to fight 
duels if their "honor" was attacked.*** The Church continued to punish 
this sometimes tragic and sometimes comical practice with excommunica- 
tion all the same. Catholicism in Austria and Hungary often was supine 
and suffered from the burden of traditionalism. The middle class with its 
small but ambitious and headstrong Jewish and Protestant minorities 
was fully imbued with ideas derived directly or indirectly from the 
French Revolution and worked for the disruption of the Danubian 
monarchy. Gladstone, the great liberal, considered her to be a medieval 
"survival," putting the realm of the Habsburgs on the same level as his 
other bete-noire — Turkey. 

Austria-Hungary nevertheless was a great asset of the Catholic Church 
and the ultimate hope of all true "reactionaries," as they were then con- 
sidered. "Progressive" people from all parts of Europe felt their political 
herd instincts outraged and insulted by the mere existence of this irra- 



* France re-established diplomatic relations after the war. Latvia with 400,000 Cath- 
olics was represented at the Vatican. Even Britain with barely 7 per cent Catholics has 
an envoy. The United States with twenty-two million Catholics still preserves her 
"splendid isolation" unlike pagan Japan and China and Lutheran Finland. 

** It was imperial Germany which readmitted the Jesuits in 1917. The Jesuits are still 
debarred from "democratic" Switzerland (and Norway). 

*** The Emperor-King Charles abolished this regulation immediately after the death 
of Francis Joseph. 



140 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

tional, national mosaic. Diversity was the keynote of Austria-Hungary. 
Twelve nationalities lived together in comparative harmony under a 
monarch who enjoyed such great moral prestige because he was (besides 
the Church) the truly uniting bond. It is hardly a question that this 
second largest European state would have survived to our very days if 
the World War had not offered an opportunity to the nationalistic middle 
classes to throw off the yoke of the benevolent Habsburgs with the help 
of the Allies, and to exchange it (after a short interlude) for the sweet 
yoke of another Austrian, a good deal less scrupulous in the methods of 
government. 

The peasants, the aristocracy, the laboring classes, and the clergy had 
been perfectly happy under the old order ; and they formed after all the 
overwhelming majority of the population. Against these historical classes 
remonstrated the urban populace, the semi-intellectuals, the lawyers, 
journalists, high school professors, gymnastic teachers, and white-collar 
workers. (Even the business world was rather divided.) These elements 
found their way to collaborate with the Allies, who helped them to break 
up the monarchy. In the delirium of victory few people were consciously 
aware of the disappearance of the Danubian monarchy. The Habsburgs 
themselves were of "unpleasant" memory for the progressives who felt 
haunted by the shadows of Philip II and the Armada, Charles V and his 
dreams of a universal monarchy, Ferdinand II, and Maximilian, the 
"Last Knight." Austria stood in their eyes for "racial" persecution, for 
Metternich's police system, the Counter Reformation, the Baroque style 
and the wars against Frederick II of Prussia. 

But in general Austria-Hungary was not disliked. The hatred of the 
Seton-Watsons and Wickham Steeds was the sentiment of a powerful 
and influential but small group of people. Francis Joseph, the tragic old 
man, was more respected than William II. Places like the Tyrol and the 
Dolomites, old Prague, gay Vienna, Dalmatia, or the Hungarian Steppes 
had a slightly Ruritanian halo of glamor and romance which was remotely 
connected with Dracula's castle in the Carpathians and the waltzes of 
Johann Strauss. 

And it was nevertheless Austria Hungary which was the reason for 
World War I and even World War II, it was Austria which was forced 
by circumstances to start the great massacre, and it was Austria again 
which was the great bait, the large, potential spoil; her destruction 
changed the map of Europe and thus conditioned the present struggle. 130 



WORLD WAR I 141 

The war of 1914-1918 was not in the interests of Germany. Every ter- 
ritorial aggrandizement of the Second Reich would have been equivalent 
to an increase of her Catholic and non-Germanic population and there- 
fore would have created an intolerable and dangerous situation in the 
eyes of all prussianized Protestant nationalists. Germany was then still 
a country partly ruled by a parliament, and an increase of Ultramontanes 
and Franco-Slavic opposition parties would have changed the character 
of the government and the administration seriously. There is not the 
slightest evidence that Germany coveted any particular part of any 
neighboring country previous to the outbreak of the war. No "move- 
ments" favoring an Anschluss of the adjacent regions were supported by 
the government of the Reich ; a German "Irreddenta" did not exist and 
no responsible person inside and outside the government put forward 
territorial claims of any nature. There are neither maps nor pamphlets 
demanding the extension of German (or Austro-Hungarian) domination 
printed before 1914 ; they became indeed very numerous after Hitler's 
advent to power but were unheard of under the imperial government. 

On the other hand we had the Italia Irreddenta working feverishly in 
Triest and the Trentino. Italian geographers were expounding the theory 
that watersheds (continental divides) alone can be regarded as just and 
tenable borders.* There was the south Slav movement directed toward 
a separation of the Croatian and Slovenian provinces from the dual 
monarchy. The Rumanian nationalists carried their propaganda to Tran- 
sylvania and the Bukovina. The Panslavs stirred up the feeling in 
Bohemia, Slovakia, and among the Ruthenes of Galicia. Czech emigrants 
(Masaryk and Benes among them), spoke about the establishment of a 
Russian imperial protectorate in their country. There were French claims 
for Alsace-Lorraine, Danish claims for Northern Slesvig, and Russian 
claims for eastern Germany. The material for these demands, aspirations, 
and desires could fill whole bookstores. 

The Central Powers were politically on the defensive. Germany espe- 
cially, as "das Reich der Mitte," had a definite inferiority complex on 
account of her encircled position, and William II followed the very un- 
wise policy of shouting menaces at the top of his voice in order to 
frighten all potential enemies, a behavior reminding one of a child in a 
dark room. There is little doubt that he was, in spite of his blunt and 



* This theory supported Italy's claim for the Brenner border which finally put 250,000 
German Austrians into Fascist servitude. Professor A. Penck, the well-known geographer 
wrote the best treatise against the watershed theory. 



142 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

uncontrolled word spoken in public, deadly afraid of war. 131 It was one 
of the tenets of German foreign policy up till the Moroccan crisis not to 
antagonize France, and the fear of a French irritation caused William II 
to decline the offers of the British government at the end of the Boer 
War for close cooperation. No competent historian considers him today 
to be the originator of the war to end wars. Yet his partly offending 
rather than offensive, and partly vacillating policy contributed to the 
downfall of the Central Powers. 

Germany and Austria-Hungary were at the end of the nineteenth cen- 
tury already inseparable allies. The efforts of King Edward VII to lure 
Austria-Hungary away from Germany were doomed to failure because 
nationalism had already made such inroads into the political mentality 
of Central Europe that the very idea of a war between Germans and 
Germans (37 per cent of all Austrian citizens were Germans) was out of 
question. The fateful events of the year 1866 should never be repeated 
again. 

Austria-Hungary had to stick to Germany, and for the Second Reich 
the Danubian monarchy was the only ally they could count upon. 
Neither was the linguistic national tie the only one between these two 
countries. They had a common tradition and a common heritage. The old 
capital of the First Reich was in Austria, the crown of the holy Roman 
emperors was in Vienna, the arms as well as the dynasty of the Sacrum 
Imperium continued their existence in Austria. The legal historical suc- 
cessor of the Caesars was in Vienna and not in Berlin. When Francis 
Joseph celebrated his diamond jubilee all German princes, headed by the 
king of Prussia, came to Vienna to pay homage to him. The old emperor 
emphasized in his thanks address that he considered himself to be a 
German sovereign — ein deutscher Fiirst. 

Most Austrians of German extraction considered themselves to be 
Germans. They rather looked down at the "Prussians" as non-Germans. 

Germany was, of course, more industrialized than Austria and her 
population was accordingly larger. Yet territorially she was smaller than 
Austria-Hungary. 

During World War I the Germans of the Second Reich bore the brunt 
of the attack, the defense, and the general hatred. The Austrians were 
only hated by their immediate neighbors and enemies. Thus most of the 
propaganda of the Allies was directed against Germany and not against 
Austria, which circumstance further helped to becloud the minds of many 
otherwise intelligent persons. It must be said in all candor that it is im- 



WORLD WAR I 143 

possible to make a correct historical evaluation of World War I while 
disregarding the fact that Austria-Hungary began the war, that she was 
the real issue of the war, and that the most important result of the war 
is the new order in the Danubian area as established in 1919. Everybody 
who denies that the World War I is not "about" Austria-Hungary, under- 
stands neither history nor Europe. 

Neither is it possible to continue the legend of German aggression in 
1914. This legend has been thoroughly destroyed. The books of Sidney 
Fay, of H. E. Barnes, G. P. Gooch, Henri Pozzi, A. v. Wegerer, Bogi- 
cevic, the publications of the German, Austrian, Russian archives and 
numerous memoirs have changed the picture completely in the eyes of 
everybody who has taken the time and energy to dig through these 
lengthy volumes.* If there is any "war guilt" on the side of the Central 
Powers one must admit that it was Austria-Hungary which made the 
fatal, but unavoidable initial steps, the most decisive ones even, without 
concrete knowledge of the German government. G. P. Gooch wrote in an 
article in German Life and Letters (Vol. Ill) : "Bismarck used to say 
that in concluding the alliance with Austria it was understood that Ger- 
many was the rider and Austria the horse. Since the coming of Aehrenthal 
in 1906 to the Ballhausplatz the roles have been reversed." This remark 
is very much to the point. 

Yet it is hopeless today, especially since September, 1939, when 
another Germany willfully started another war, to propagate the truth. 
It probably will take at least a full generation after this present struggle, 
decades of sobering up, thinking, reflecting, and investigating, until the 
wars of 1914 and 1939 will clearly be considered apart. There is little 
hope in the near future that the just accusations against the Germany 
of 1939 will not be automatically extended to the Germany of 1914. If 
we live by 1960 still in an ochlocratic age (i.e., in an age of mass emo- 
tions), no such distinctions will be either made or encouraged in spite of 
the fact that we can see now clearly the difference between a prepared 
and an unprepared Germany.** 



* The French have never published their archives. 

** One frequently hears the talk of "well-informed historians" maintaining that Ger- 
many violated the neutrality of Belgium which she had solemnly pledged to respect. 
Yet Germany never signed the Belgian Neutrality Pact for the simple reason that she 
did not exist in the years between 1806 and 1871. The Belgian neutrality was actually 
violated by Austria-Hungary (who was a signatory) by sending their heavy artillery, 
which alone was able to crack the heavy fortifications, to Belgium in August-September, 
1914. 



144 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

The tragedy of 1914 could perhaps not have been averted. The Ka- 
ragjorgjevics of Serbia, who were for three years not recognized by the 
British government because they had gained their throne by murder, set 
the fuse by profiting from a new murder. Russia regarded herself as 
compelled to stand by Serbia on account of the Panslavist sentiment, 
and the intrigues of the military clique checkmated every imperial peace 
effort coming either from Berlin or St. Petersburg. The French "liberal" 
republic, so liberal in her loans to the eastern autocracy, was bound to 
help her. England, tied to France by the secret Naval Agreement of 1907, 
was bound to assist the Franco-Russian Entente. Constitutional tradi- 
tion in England made it impossible for the king, a first cousin of William 
II, to intervene effectively. Italy, who had given birth to a Machiavelli, 
swung from the Central Powers to the Allies, in spite of the fact that 
her former associates could promise her far greater profits.* Yet the 

Neither were all Englishmen so sure whether they had to defend the neutrality of 
Belgium prior to the secret Anglo-French "naval" alliance of 1907. During the Boulan- 
gist crisis in 1887 several papers published letters and editorials urging nonintervention 
in the case of French or German violation of Belgium independence. The Standard, 
semiofficial English paper, brought a letter of "Diplomaticus" on February 2 which 
was followed by an editorial on the fourth. There was an editorial the same day with 
the same tendency by Stead in the Pall Mall Gazette and an article representing a 
similar view by Sir Charles Dilke in a June number of the Fortnightly Review. The 
text of the treaty (confirmed by Prussia, Austria, England, and Russia) was actually 
not clear and the secret clause about the fortresses actually permitted occupation of the 
Belgian fortresses by a large power other than France. This secret clause was never 
formally abrogated but it can be maintained that it had lost its object by the passing 
of the Napoleonic danger. 

The famous Belgian jurist, professor Ernest Nys, a member of the International 
Court of Arbitration in the Hague wrote in 1912 in his monumental work: Le droit 
international, les principes, les theories, les fails (Bruxelles, 1912, I, p. 424) : "In reality 
Belgium obtained the guarantees of neutrality, but the Five Powers did not give her a 
guarantee of the integrity and inviolability of her territory. . . . This is a situation 
quite different from that of Switzerland." 

There is no doubt that the attack on a peaceful country is not a commendable deed. 
But the attack on Greece by the Allies in 1917 was morally as condemnable as Ger- 
many's attack of Belgium in 1914 — not less and not more so. Germany's assault on 
Belgium in 1940 on the other hand was a far greater crime than either forementioned 
cases; it happened almost immediately after a solemn declaration of nonintervention. 

Says Guglielmo Ferrero: "The Allies tore up two treaties — the Declaration of Paris 
of 18S6 and the Declaration of London of 1909 — which limited the right of blockade 
to material strictly necessary for armies and warfare. The nations who blockaded the 
central empires do not yet realize that in 1914 the wholesale blockade, as the Allies 
applied it, was a measure of warfare quite as expressly prohibited by treaty as the 
invasion of Belgium." — Peace and War. Trans, by Bertha Pritchard, London, 1933, p. 59. 

* Austria was ready to cede to Italy all the Italian-speaking part of the South 
Tyrol as well as territories near Triest, which should receive the status of a free city. 
In the case of a victory of the Central Powers Italy could expect the return of Corsica, 
Nizza, Savoy, and the annexation of Tunisia in addition to the districts blackmailed 
from Austria. 



WORLD WAR I 145 

anti-Habsburg influences determined her to join the anti-Austrian and 
only accidentally anti-German bloc. 

This war was clearly, if we exclude Russia, a war of the "modern" 
countries against the "survivals." Even the Balkan states, in spite 
of their technical industrial "backwardness," were deeply imbued with 
the ideas of the French Revolution. Neither Serbia nor Montenegro had 
a feudal background. The power of the Italian king was only nominal, 
and England, then liberal to the core, had an ineffective Conservative 
opposition. The Russian Revolution did not bring despair alone to 
London and Paris but also a sigh of relief. Now at last it was possible 
for the American Republic to join the crusade to make Europe safe for 
politicians, traders, and dictators. People spoke of a victory of the ideals 
of 1688, 1776, and 1789. Today these very ideals are effectively challenged 
by 1917, 1922, and 1933. It is London and Washington who are now 
the "survivals" with a conservative program against the revolutions. 

Hardly had the war begun when an immense propaganda of hatred 
and calumnies enveloped the more ochlocratically inclined countries of 
the world. Propaganda was used to a small extent in the "backward" 
countries like Russia, Turkey, Serbia, Austria-Hungary, and Rumania. 
In Germany, Italy, and certainly in France it was felt quite strongly. 
But England and the United States outdid them all. Propaganda had 
to arouse active hatred and indignation in order to keep the modern 
"fighting spirit" alive. The hinterland was soon more enraged and in- 
flamed than the front, and the female element at home was in that 
respect far worse than any active combatant. The conception of tradi- 
tional chivalry on the Western Front survived merely in the ci-devant 
individualistic weapon of the air force. Waves of soldiers, driven by 
sinister, teeth-gnashing sentiments, were hurled against each other; the 
more illiterates the armies contained, the lower the level of "popular 
education," the smaller the percentage of city-bred population, the more 
human was the war. 

Austrian officers, referring to the Galician or Volhynian battlefields, 
spoke about the "gentleman front," a term that was not extended to 
the Isonzo Valley, while the war in the Dolomites had more personal 
aspects and was therefore also more affected by the spirit of chivalry 
and sport. Russian prisoners of war, "farmed out" to the Hungarian 
peasantry, had a good time; frequently they married the war widows 
and nobody saw anything blamable in it. English as well as French 
was taught in Austrian and German schools during the war. But Austria- 



146 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

Hungary alone, being less "progressive" than her German ally, refrained 
from putting enemy aliens of military age into concentration camps, a 
method practiced by Berlin, London, and Paris alike. Prisoners of war, 
especially officers, had frequently a good time in Austria and Montene- 
gro; 132 Austrian and German craftsmen, released from military prisons 
by the Russian authorities, could settle down in smaller towns, and made 
a splendid living until Bolshevism destroyed their prospects. The Siberian 
camps, of course, were less pleasant. 

This propaganda of hatred 113 in modern wars is of absolute necessity 
because of their ochlocratic character, because public opinion has to be 
taken into consideration, and also because all modern wars are (for the 
aforementioned reasons) "holy wars." Human nature is basically ideal- 
istic and it is impossible, contrary to general beliefs, to wage a modern 
mass war for economic or for that sake also for dynastic reasons. Only 
professional soldiers who love fighting for fighting's sake would co- 
operate in such an enterprise. Yet these are always a small minority. 
The mass war demands mass emotions because it is only possible to 
ask the average man to sacrifice his life for an emotional value and one 
has to admit sadly that hatred is often stronger than love. 134 

The Russian soldiers who "attacked" the enemy forty-five lines deep 
in the Carpathians, the first fifteen lines equipped with prayer books in- 
stead of rifles, fought perhaps without "conviction," but also without 
hatred. Yet from a higher point of view it is definitely better to die for 
"Holy Russia" and the "Little Father Czar" than in a crusade against 
"Huns." 

Efforts to restore peace and to stop the senseless butchering, by which 
big capital alone profited handsomely, were made by supranational as 
well as by international powers. The Socialists met in Stockholm but 
their efforts were in vain. The British government had not given passports 
to the members of the Labor Party, while the German government, eager 
for a peaceful settlement — in spite of such intransigents as Ludendorff 
and Count Stolberg-Wernigerode — had acted otherwise. President Wil- 
son's appeal and proposals demonstrated the depressing ignorance of the 
ex-governor of New Jersey in the affairs of Europe, but it was received 
with sympathy in the capitals of all belligerent powers. Efforts of greater 
importance were made by the Pope, but they, too, failed miserably on 
account of the hostility from the side of the German Protestants, headed 



WORLD WAR I 147 

by Michaelis,* and the "liberal" anti-Catholics led by the fatal trium- 
virate, Wilson, Lloyd George, Clemenceau. 135 A moral victory of the 
papacy had to be avoided by all means and the indifference of these 
statesmen toward the death of millions of men was manifest. 136 The 
great task of paving the way for Adolf Hitler was not yet accomplished. 
Stupidity, shortsightedness, greed, prejudice, and bigotry had never 
reaped greater victories. The democratically elected politicos quickly 
proceeded after their sanguinary diplomatic victory over the papacy to 
thwart another peace effort coming this time from Charles I, the pious 
emperor of Austria. 

While English, French, and German shareholders of the flourishing 
Nobel dynamite factories discussed dividends and interests in peaceful 
Switzerland, and German soldiers on the western front were killed by 
weapons for which the Krupp works continued to receive royalties dur- 
ing the whole war, delegates of Charles I met the emperor's brother-in- 
law on neutral soil. This young man, Prince Sixte of Bourbon-Parma, 
thanks to the intervention of the queen of the Belgians, served in the 
Belgian army.** 

It was the intention of the Austrian ruler to use his relative as an in- 
termediary between himself and the French government. In a later stage 
he sent an autographed letter to be shown to the French authorities who 
promptly published it in order to sow discord between Vienna and 
Berlin. Through this wanton betrayal of confidence the peace efforts 
were frustrated. 137 

Thus the war went on ; the Allies had in the meantime given binding 
promises to the dissatisfied elements in the dual monarchy and Presi- 
dent Wilson proclaimed pompously that he was not willing to deal 
with the representatives of the "German autocracy." The hungry and 



* It must be stated here in all fairness that the German emperor, who was never a 
bigoted anti-Catholic, received the papal peace proposals with great sympathy. Michaelis' 
boycott of the peace plan is splendidly described in Friedrich Ritter von Lama's Die 
Friendensvermittlung Papst Benedikt XV (Munich, 1932). 

The president of the German Protestant Union, Count Stolberg-Wernigerode wrote a 
flaming manifesto declaring that "the glittering, victorious sword is going to decide the 
issue and not dark papal intrigue," which sounds amusing in the light of the outcome 
of the war. Yet the funniest part of his open letter lies in his accusation that the pope 
purposely made his efforts in the year when all "Germany celebrated the four-hundredth 
anniversary of the Reformation" (1517-1917). 

** As a descendant of the Bourbons, who after all had some merits in regard to France, 
the egalitarian French Republic, did not permit him to join the French forces. Later, as 
a special privilege, he was allowed to reside in France. 



148 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

desperate masses of the Central Powers revolted and exiled their mon- 
archs in order to comply with Wilson's demands, and the drama which 
found its climax on September 1, 1939, took its course. 

One hears frequently the argument that the Central Powers would 
have treated the Allies brutally if they had won the war, and the treaties 
of Brest-Litovsk (Brzesc nad Bugiem) and Bucharest are always cited 
as outstanding examples of a dictatorial peace arrangement and as 
logical forerunners of St. Germain and Trianon. Yet in connection with 
these two treaties one is tempted to repeat Bowie Haggart's words in 
- Barrie's Auld Licht Idylls: 

I am of opeenion that the works of Burns is of an immoral tendency, I 
have not read them myself, but such is my opeenion. 

Yet it is true that the Treaty of Brest was not fair. The Central Powers 
were anxious to impress the world by their moderation and a weak effort 
was made to apply Wilson's delirious proposal for "self-determination" ; 
the result was a compromise in favor of the Russians. The Finns, 
Esthonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, and Poles were given borders which 
were far from meeting their just demands. Thus the Latvians of Latgalia 
were left under the communist regime. The district of Chelm, populated 
by Ukrainians with Polish sympathies, was given to the Ukraine and 
naturally the Poles were alienated in their sympathies from the Central 
Powers to such a degree that they instinctively turned to the Allies for 
help in the realization of their hopes. The Esthonians who had claims 
for the district of Petseri were no less disappointed than the Finns, who 
had expected to receive Karelia and Ingermanland. Without the posses- 
sion of these two provinces they could never reasonably hope to stave 
off communist attacks in the future.* The Ukraine became an inde- 
pendent country and even after the breakdown of Skoropadsky's and 
Petlyura's nationalist regimes and the subsequent victory of the Bolshe- 
viks this country was never reincorporated into (Soviet) Russia, but 
became merely a member of the international Soviet Union. 

Yet in spite of the actual intentions, the Treaty of Brest Litovsk was 
soon decried as the most brutal and dictatorial arrangement. The fact 



♦There is little doubt that Finland in the possession of Ingermanland and Karelia 
would have been in the position militarily to take care of herself in 1939-1940. The 
Nyeva River, Lake Ladoga, the Zvir River, Lake Onyega, and the White Sea would 
have given her a perfect system of defense. In addition she would have received a 
Finnish-speaking population of 600,000 people. 



WORLD WAR I 149 

that the newly revived nations again had to resort to arms, immediately 
after the final defeat of the Central Powers, in order to conquer additional 
territories from the Soviet Union (to which they had perfect claims), 
proves the contrary. The Finns thus acquired Petsamo; the Latvians, 
Latgalia; the Esthonians, Petseri; the Poles got thousands of square 
miles; and even the Rumanians, the "gallant Allies in the East," did 
not make the slightest move to return Bessarabia, to which they had 
a good right according to national statistics and historical tradition. This 
time no voice of protest was heard and the western statesmen considered 
it not a crime that as many square inches as possible should be wrenched 
from the destructive realm of the Red Czar. And this time they were 
(accidentally) right. (See map, Appendix V.) 

The situation at the Treaty of Bucharest was not identical. Rumania 
was a monarchy and her ruler a relative of the other European dy- 
nasties.* It must be remembered that the Soviet Union, although out- 
side the category of traditional European states, was nevertheless treated 
as a diplomatic equal at Brest Litovsk. Its representatives, fresh from 
the Siberian prisons and the Ukrainian ghettos, dined solemnly with 
the prince regent of Bavaria, Count Czernin, General Hoffmann, and 
Herr von Kiihlmann.** Even Ludendorff, that Machiavellian and destruc- 
tive militarist who had shipped Lenin to Russia, was present and hob- 
nobbed with Trotzky, Radek, and Yoffe. The old tradition of sports- 
manship still lingered on.*** And this tradition was even stronger in the 
Rumanian case. A group of Rumanian politicians (under Marghiloman) 
suggesting that their country should be included in an Austro-Hungarian 
federation and their royal house exiled was — in spite of William IPs 
wavering attitude — not listened to. 



* It is psychologically not easy for a monarchy to consider a republic as an "equal," 
just as there was a marked difference between a country inside and outside of the 
League of Nations. To have a Christian monarch was equivalent to belong to a definite 
covenant to which the outsider had no claim. 

The supporters of the League regarded the very existence of countries outside the 
League as undesirable. Monarchs considered for similar reasons the existence of re- 
publics in Europe as something negative. Switzerland was always treated as an excep- 
tion because of her self-declared neutrality. Her neutrality was therefore a declaration to 
keep out of European politics, to keep out of the whole game of alliances, treaties, wars, 
and diplomatic intrigues. 

** See the amusing descriptions in J. Wheeler-Bennett's, The Forgotten Peace, Brest- 
Litovsk, pp. 113-115 (New York, 1939). 

*** If one compares this attitude with the behavior of the Allies toward the delegates 
of the democratic Weimar Republic, who were kept behind barbed wire, one is able to 
make an estimate of Europe's decline since 1815. The delegates of Austria and of Hungary 
were similarly treated like criminals. 



ISO THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

Rumania had to consent to a correction of her Hungarian border, 
involving the loss of a few hundred square miles of barren land in the 
Carpathians with a population of about 3000 people. She had also to 
cede 23,000 square kilometers in the southeast (the Dobrudja) to the 
Central Powers who turned over one third of this territory to Bulgaria.* 
Rumania, on the other hand, was compensated for the loss of 800,000 
inhabitants in the Dobrudja (a loss which was not final) with Bessarabia, 
a province of 44,000 square kilometers and almost 3,000,000 inhabitants. 
The "reactionary and feudal" Central Powers forced Rumania to grant 
full citizenship to its Jewish subjects.** Thus Rumania emerged from her 
defeat with an actual gain. Yet this did not prevent her from declaring 
war on the Central Powers three hours prior to the armistice and to seize 
another gigantic piece of land equivalent to about 90 per cent of her 
own territory. 

Such were these two treaties. It is interesting to note that there were 
few Englishmen or Americans who acclaimed the "liquidation" of the 
Treaty of Brest Litovsk in 1940 with great enthusiasm. When Soviet 
Russia knifed Poland in the back supporting Nazi aggression and started 
to grab Bessarabia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Esthonia in order "to redress 
the wrongs of Brest Litovsk" (as their press wrote), the United States 
State Department and the Foreign Office protested against these actions. 
When Russia attacked Finland in 1939 in order to swallow her up, few 
"democrats" exulted with joy. Even moderate Socialists felt outraged 
about this unprovoked assault, and yet one wonders how many of them 
realize that Finland's independence has been stipulated in Brest Litovsk 
and that her freedom was largely due to German armed intervention. 

The affirmation that the Western Powers were fighting for "democracy" 
had gained more credibility by the end of 1917. Russia had become a 



* Rumania gained the Southern Dobrudja in a most peculiar way. When Bulgaria 
was overwhelmed in the Second Balkan War by a coalition of Serbia, Montenegro, 
Greece, and Turkey the Rumanians appeared on the scene and occupied the defenseless 
Southern Dobrudja. 

Bulgaria coveted, after the signing of the Treaty of Bucharest, also the central and 
northern part of the Dobrudja (which is largely populated by non-Rumanians) but 
Austria-Hungary and Germany were determined to return this region to Rumania after 
the war. This produced a similar result as the cessation of Chelm to the Ukrainians. 
The Bulgarians cooled down in their enthusiasm for the Central Powers and concluded 
an early, separate armistice with the Allies after the first big reverses in autumn, 1918. 

** Cf. the curious protest of D. Iancovici in La Paix de Bucharest, Paris, 1918, p. 201 
and Texts of the Rumanian Peace, Washington, D. C, 1918, pp. 28-29. 



WORLD WAR I 151 

"democracy" in March, but the Russian ochlocracy went through the 
stages of evolution quicker than even Plato had dared to dream. The 
young republic was already a tyranny in November, and Hungary 
achieved the same goal in an equally short time, while Germany, always 
slow and thorough, took fourteen fateful years. 

Supranational monarchism was dead by 1919. A Welsh lawyer in the 
highest political office of Great Britain demanded publicly the hanging 
of the first cousin of his own king. It made an excellent slogan for elec- 
tions and worked like magic. A regime with ochlocratic tendencies which 
goes to war and makes full use of its skill in the art of propaganda can- 
not suddenly swing around and stop abruptly all artificially aroused senti- 
ments. It is easy to stop a small canoe within a few yards of the embank- 
ment, but a 70,000 ton ocean steamer, doing 32 knots per hour in one 
direction has to slow down and to put on counterspeed many miles 
before it reaches the harbor. Governments under popular pressure are 
such large boats. Peace treaties are thus forced and concluded by the 
representatives of the victorious masses, who are still under the spell 
of mass emotion. 138 Brest Litovsk and Bucharest were not in the least 
influenced by the general will, and there is no doubt that Hungarian 
public opinion demanded a greater "punishment" for Rumania, to 
which the Hungarian experts and the King-Emperor did not agree. 

The shortcomings of the suburban treaties of Paris — Versailles, Tria- 
non, St. Germain, Neuilly, and Sevres — can be summed up as follows : 

1. The atmosphere of mass hatred under which these treaties were con- 
cluded. (Which is largely due to nationalism and democratism.) 

2. The lack of fraternal royal feeling which usually paralyzes the effects 
of general hatred. 

3. The monumental ignorance of the political leaders and the lack of 
expert geographical opinion. 139 

4. The complete failure of the economic "experts" in their estimates. 

5. The return to primitive "dictation" (Vae victis!) and the absence of 
the element of negotiation. 

6. The social treatment of the delegates of the former Central Powers. 

7. The application of impossible geopolitical dogmas. 

8. The breach of promises and disregard of the original program (14 
points of Wilson) due to secret commitments. 

9. The humiliation inflicted through the war-guilt clauses. 
10. "Punishment" of nations. 140 

The trouble is that modern countries are usually run by politicians 
and not by statesmen, which is a different thing altogether. The repre- 



152 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

sentatives of the western nations had an educational background which 
was certainly inferior to that of a Dutch secondary school. 141 There is 
little doubt that a personal meeting of European monarchs would have 
moved on a higher plane and that greater intimacy and understanding 
would have prevailed. There was not a single ruler in 1917 who did not 
speak three to five languages with great ease. Yet the lack of linguistic 
abilities alone would not have had such fateful consequences ; an astound- 
ing ignorance of history and geography prevailed among the people's rep- 
resentatives who had been chosen on account of their popularity, not 
their knowledge, and this they had little time to improve once they were 
in office. It is highly probable that in the subjects mentioned premier 
and president could never have successfully passed the entrance examina- 
tion to a Continental university. To this lack of education and knowl- 
edge one has to add a lack of manners and ineradicable prejudices. Mr. 
David Lloyd George disliked monarchs and he didn't care for Catholic 
ideas. Yet Europe is, apart from its northwestern islands and peninsulas, 
a predominantly Catholic continent.* Whether one likes the Church or 
not, one cannot ignore her. Yet Mr. Lloyd-George expected more from 
the genuine, mutual sympathies of "free nations" than from traditional 
solutions. 142 But these same nations soon voted for dictatorships** and 
the ensuing "popular leaders" made old-fashioned liberals long for a 
revival of the Middle Ages. But then it was too late. 

Mr. Wilson had a similar dislike for Catholics and this prejudice had 
fatal consequences. 143 It was a tragedy that two of the representatives 
of the Big Four were Protestants (the one a Calvinist, the other a 
Wesleyan) and that the rest consisted of lapsed Catholics. Clemenceau 
was even famous for his violent anticlericalism. 

Thus ended in 1919 the Christian political history of Europe. This is 
the deeper significance of the "suburban" treaties which really were 
suburban from every point of view. The French Revolution had begun 
the work of destruction. Now it had received its official seal. In order 
to solidify this new disorder a League of Nations was set up. This secular 
dream of gentlemen in tails and top hats sitting around a table, united 
by some vague humanitarian mutual affection and talking shop could 



* The Catholic population of the European Continent is roughly 210 millions, the 
Protestant, 65 millions. The Catholic birth rate lies on the average 65 per cent higher 
than the Protestant. 

** About the superficiality of European "Liberalism," see Eugene M. Anderson's ex- 
cellent article in Social Education, May, 1938. 



WORLD WAR I 153 

never become effective. 144 The lack of a common spiritual basis and a 
common moral code doomed the League to failure before she even settled 
down on the shores of Lake Geneva. What, after all, did unite these 
hopeless busybodies? The knowledge of God's all-compromising father- 
hood or just the experience that wars were expensive and uncomfortable ? 
Strange people could be seen in the halls of the palace of the League. 
Little yellow men who affirmed that their emperor descended from the 
sun goddess Amaterasu, delegates of loyalist Spain which persecuted 
religion brutally, delegates of the Soviet Union firmly believing in Marx- 
ian dialectics, Scandinavians putting their faith in materialism and the 
fatherhood of the Pithecanthropus erectus Dubois, Austrians and Portu- 
guese who came from countries which tried to oppose the evil spirit 
of the time. Their faiths divided them more than their languages. And 
through the windows one looked out on the town of Jean Cauvin and 
Jean Jacques Rousseau. 145 

This league of men who were neither noble, nor savage, nor anything 
else soon found its deserved end. 

The Treaty of Versailles* itself was not the great evil which finally 
brought the National Socialists into power. It is not difficult to vindicate 
the letter of Versailles; it is the spirit which makes it inexcusable. It is 
the spirit of Versailles which brought no material advantage whatsoever 
to the victors but gave the National Socialists a powerful weapon into 
their hands. Was it necessary to copy Herr von Bismarck's bad dramatic 
taste in choosing the Mirror Hall of Versailles, birthplace of the Second 
Reich, as a stage for the scene where the German delegates were made 
to sign the fateful document? They signed the death warrant of the 
Second Reich which was a none too glorious period in German history 
but a mild one in comparison with the one bound to follow. Could not 
another day have been picked than the fifth anniversary of the assassi- 
nation in Sarayevo and the four hundredth anniversary of the election 
of the greatest ruler of the First Reich — Charles V?** Was it necessary 



*The reader is reminded that the Treaty of Versailles was concluded between the 
Allies and Germany only. As a treaty, that of Versailles is much less important than 
the treaties of St. Germain (Austria) and Trianon (Hungary and the Allies), treaties 
which changed the map of Europe more fundamentally than Versailles. 

**The date was June 28. There is, of course, a possibility (taking the poor educational 
background of the delegates into consideration) that they were not intentionally 
mischievous. 



154 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

to celebrate in such solemn form the fact that murder does pay?* Could 
not Count Brockdorff-Rantzau be treated at least in the same way as 
Trotzki was treated in Brest Litovsk? Was it necessary to force the 
signature under the war guilt clause?** 

Many similar questions could be asked in connection with that sad and 
silly Treaty of Versailles. But one thing can be mentioned in its defense 
and that is its factual content which was hard but not intolerable. The 
financial demands were anyhow so unreasonable that no intelligent per- 
son expected that the demands could be met. Yet the territorial arrange- 
ments gave sense. Alsace-Lorraine, as could be expected from French 
insistence, was detached from Germany. The Danes had a perfect right 
to northern Sleswig, and the Poles ought to have received more than 
they did. The plebiscites in the Upper Silesian and the East Prussian 
lands were unfortunately held at a much too early date. For these Reich 
citizens of Polish nationality the idea to join Poland was still identical 
with joining Russian Poland {"Congress Poland") which was maladmin- 
istrated under Muscovite rule. The plebiscites were therefore in favor 
of Germany and added to the friction. Another mistake was made in 
the case of Danzig, a mistake which caused endless complications. Na- 
tional ("racial") borders in eastern Europe are utter nonsense; Danzig, 
together with all of Western Prussia (Pomorze), Posen, and Upper Silesia, 
should have been given to Poland. This would have included even more 
Germans, but from the point of view of a minority it is better to be 
numerous than to be suppressed as a negligible quantity which can 
offer no resistance. The more national minorities a state has, the less 
efficient, hopeful, and active will their suppression be. One has only to 
compare the desperate situation of the Austro-Germans in the South 
Tyrol, under Italian domination, with the Germans in Bohemia and 
Moravia under Czech rule. 



* The Serbs erected promptly a monument for the murderer Gavrilo Princip. The 
National Socialist also found great delight in the idea of assassin worship and named 
many places after the murderer of Dollfuss (Planetta). The Italians preceded this noble 
cult by having many Piazza Oberdan(k) in their country. Oberdank was an Italian of 
German ancestry who attempted to assassinate Emperor Francis Joseph. Planetta 
(Pianetta) was probably of Italian descent. It is possible that foreign names incite indi- 
viduals to a greater racial "self-assertion." (Earlier another man, with the Czech name 
of Drtil, tried to assassinate Dollfuss.) 

**The reason given for the war guilt clause is that it would be impossible to make 
Germany pay without a "moral" justification. Neither is it moral to force a signature. 
If the Germans would have been told that the whole war was a mistake from both 
sides, that great damage was done, and that in a bout it is always the loser (not the 
"scoundrel") who pays the bill, much trouble could have been avoided. 



WORLD WAR I 155 

A Poland with its historic borders in the west including Upper Silesia 
would have been a strong, well-rounded state; with the borders of Ver- 
sailles it was crippled from the very beginning. The Poles are undoubtedly 
to blame for their excessive nationalism, but it would be very unjust to 
blame them alone for this suicidal policy. 146 As long as ethnic nationalism 
is a potent force no reasonable political life can exist, no reasonable state 
can be put up, no reasonable and permanent border drawn. 

The total loss of colonies was definitely a breach of promise but 
practically no financial loss to Germany. In view of all these facts it 
is not an exaggeration to believe that, in spite of the factual arrange- 
ments of Versailles, the rise and victory of National Socialism has little 
connection with the treaty itself. The circumstances of the signing, the 
accusations, humiliations, discriminations are of a more serious nature. 
Yet the real root of all evil was the nature of the events of 1918—1919 : 
the Weimar Constitution, the flight of William II to Holland, the in- 
creased centralization, socialism and socialization, the whole impetus 
which ochlocracy and materialism gained, thanks to the victory of the 
Allies. Versailles has as much to do with the reasons for the existence 
of National Socialism as the Boston Tea Party with American Inde- 
pendence. Both events were symptoms and not causes. 

Germany lost the war technically on November 11, 1918, when she 
sued for an armistice, but she won it "back," in spite of Versailles (even 
materially) when Austria had to consent to the breaking up of her 
territory in the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye a few months later. This 
treaty was supplemented a year later with the Diktat of Trianon between 
Hungary and the Allies. 

The procedure in all three cases was the same; for weeks the 
representatives of the Allies deliberated among themselves and then 
"informed" the delegates of the Central Powers, who were treated like 
dangerous criminals, of their "decision." Not a single point of the original 
draft was modified. Even a man like Bismarck had changed the prelim- 
inary treaty with France by returning the district of the fortress of 
Belfort to her. But the high-pressure salesmanship of the Western 
Powers had finally the opposite effect from that which they expected. 
Germany had already deeply impressed most Europeans with her stand 
for four and a half years against practically the whole world. "Morally" 
she had lost very little. 147 But now that the map was so radically changed, 
after the solid block of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy had been 



156 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

smothered into unrecognizable fragments, Germany was put in the 
most advantageous geopolitical situation. It was now only a question 
of time when a rejuvenated and reinforced Germany would enter into 
a receivership for the liquidated estates of the dual monarchy. The 
imaginary "road to Bagdad" was now a reality. 

To illustrate the situation better one might visualize a cage (Central 
Europe) containing a lion and a tiger, Austria and Germany. The Allies 
killed the lion, carved him up, broiled his slices, and left these on 
a platter. Then they humiliated the tiger beyond words, clipped his tail 
and ears, cut his claws, wounded his back, starved him, and locked the 
cage. Our "democratic" simpletons were highly astonished when the tiger 
started to eat the remains of his former cage mate once he had finished 
with the job of licking his wounds. 

It must be realized that the Habsburgs in exile meant the green light 
for Prussianized Germany. When William II arrived in Amerongen the 
way for Adolf Hitler was open, 1 * 8 when Charles I debarked from a British 
cruiser on the shores of an African island to die a bitter death in exile, 
the war was lost for the Allies. The fact that it took them twenty years 
to become aware of this truth has no bearing on the matter. 149 

Another aspect of this great anti-Austrian victory 150 was the Balkan- 
ization of large parts of Europe. The "democrats," who always boasted 
of being "moderns," created fragmentary states which were against the 
very spirit of the time and a challenge to economic principles. Yet neither 
monolithic centralized mammoth states nor hopeless panellation is the 
solution, but the federal, decentralized principle of organic crystalliza- 
tion. Now countries were invented which in history had never existed 
before. In vain do we try to find names like "Czechoslovakia" or "Yugo- 
slavia" in the Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1912. The name Rumania had 
only been coined in the fifties in order to have a common label for 
Vallachia and Moldavia. But the lack of any tradition was considered an 
asset rather than a handicap. In vain did Hungarian propaganda 
emphasize that their country was an ezerives kirdlysdg, a kingdom over 
1000 years old;* the expression "the young republic" sounded so far 
better and hopeful. 



* The countries of the oldest "national" continuity in Europe are Bulgaria, Croatia, 
and Hungary. Of these the Hungarians and Croats alone can claim also an unbroken 
continuity of statehood which is the more interesting because the Hungarians are not 
Europeans, but of Mongoloid, Finnish-Turkish descent. 



WORLD WAR I 157 

These new states were nationalistic states with enormous minorities. 
Czechoslovakia had 52 per cent of non-Czechs,* Yugoslavia, 60 per cent 
non-Serbs,** Rumania, 25 per cent non-Rumanians. These new countries 
insisted from time to time, not without deeper justification, on being 
called "democracies." If their "dominating race" formed more than 
50 per cent of the population or provided more than half the deputies 
in their parliaments, then the minorities had no hope for a revindica- 
tion of their rights. Their treatment usually varied from suspicion and 
fiscal vexation to brutal persecution, mass execution, torture and exile. 
After all, they disturbed the uniform monotony of the herd, and were 
thus eo ipso troublemakers. 

A rigorous application of the Wilsonian principle of self-determination 
is, of course, equally hopeless. The masses generally do not know what 
is best for themselves or the community of states. This principle, if 
sincerely invoked, produced such monstrosities as the Czech-German 
border after the Munich Conference, this sublime triumph of Wilson- 
ism.*** The National Socialists, with their spasmodically manifested 
respect for the general will, have invoked this principle very successfully 
when it fitted in with their plans. 

It is the nationalistic uniformistic spirit which lies at the bottom 
of these evils. The problem will only be solved if people are able to 
get back to their natural delight for a diversity of languages, customs, 
dresses, and habits. The alternative is rather simple; it is either return 
or suicide. 

The breaking up of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy was also a heavy 
blow to the Church which awoke after the victory of the progressive 
Allies in a thoroughly bourgeois world. 151 The victory of the middle 
classes was almost complete. 



* The Slovaks speak a language which is almost identical with Czech but their his- 
tory, tradition, and character marks them out as a totally different people. 

** The Serbs cynically listed in their statistics every Bulgarian as "Yugoslav." 
Neither was a difference made in their census between Serb, Croat, and Slovene. 

*** Another attempt to create a "linguistic" frontier was made in the case of the new 
(1940) border between Rumania and Hungary which clearly shows that the National 
Socialist genius is always able to beat the "democratic" mind in its own game, be that 
even the noble competition in absolute stupidity. 

These new borders fit national-socialist purposes admirably. It will help to keep 
Central Europe full of frictions, suspicions, and hatred. It will prevent the establishment 
of any state which is strong enough to serve as a crystallizing point and thus might 
antagonize Germany. Divide et Impera! has been the great catchword since 1919. 



158 THE MENACE OF THE HEED 

Rump Austria was governed most of the time by a Catholic party 
which frequently had to compromise with a huge Socialist minority 
exercising an absolutistic rule over the city of Vienna. This metropolis 
harbored one third of the population of the small Alpine republic, which 
tended to become a "second Switzerland." Yet while ochlocratic and 
socialist influences made Vienna the heart and brain of the Second 
Internationale, the Alpine districts under Catholic influence developed 
an ardent hatred against Vienna. 

Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Rumania installed an ochlocratic 
and bureaucratic rule with oligarchic tendencies. Officialdom is for the 
etatistic bourgeois the same thing as the clergy for the people of the 
Middle Ages. A soulless, inorganic bureaucracy, centralizing tendencies, 
the middle classes, state omnipotency, and uniformity all go very 
well together. 

Hungary after a short communist reign of terror became in name 
a monarchy again. In practice it is a republic run by the Calvinist 
gentry as the most powerful class. Hungary and Czechoslovakia were 
both predominantly Catholic (Hungary, 67 per cent, the Czechoslovak 
Republic, 78 per cent in 1937) yet most of their high officials were non- 
Catholic if not anti-Catholic. The Regent Horthy of Hungary, the Prime 
Ministers Bethlen and Gombos, the Presidents Masaryk and Benes of 
Czechoslovakia were Protestants, Agnostics, or Neo-Hussites. In spite 
of the hatred and tension between Hungary and Czechoslovakia the 
Hungarian Calvinists unceasingly cooperated with M. Benes in his efforts 
to thwart a Habsburg restoration. As a rule the non-Catholic elements 
always were bitterly anti-Habsburg. The Neo-Hussites in Bohemia, the 
Moravian Brethren in Moravia, the Lutherans in Slovakia, the Calvinists 
in Hungary, the Schismatics as well as the "Old Catholics" in Transyl- 
vania and Croatia opposed the Habsburgs, Vienna and Austria with the 
despair of hatred. The Jews were frequently in the same boat and only 
after the rise of National Socialism in Germany did they change their 
direction.* Yet men like Benes persevered. "I rather want to see the 
Nazis in Prague than the Habsburgs in Vienna," he had declared in 1934. 
There is little evidence of an organized conspiracy; the anti-Habsburg 
sentiment of the evangelical and agnostic groups was an instinctive 



* The first sign of a change of mind was Philipp Menczel's book Triigerische Losungen 
which was published in the early thirties. Herr Menczel is a zionistic Jew from Czerno- 
witz in the Bukovina (then under Rumanian rule). 



WORLD WAR I 159 

resentment* and paved Germany's way to the Balkans in the last years. 

The new order — i.e., the "liberation of small oppressed nations" — 
found approval in the leftist circles of Paris as well as in British non- 
conformity. Mr. Wickham Steed and Mr. Seton-Watson {Scotus Viator) 
saw their dreams come true. The light of progress had finally come to 
the Danubian area which British and American** liberalism had always 
considered the darkest part of Europe with the possible exception 
of Turkey. 

The man to avenge the easy murder of Austria was an Austrian who 
got hold for this purpose of the most deadly and precise instrument in 
Europe — the German people. At one time he had turned his eye south 
of the Alps, as all Germans traditionally do. A superficial glance seemed 
enough. And then he started to create a superochlocratic, superidentitarian, 
monotonous, and monolithic state which was a synthesis of all ideas 
sprung from the French Revolution, a veritable reductio ad absurdum 
of "progressive" thought, a gorgonic mirror to the West. This man 
is Adolf Hitler. 

Involuntarily Virgil's immortal hexameter comes into one's mind: 
Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor!*** This avenger from the bones 
of dead Austria has come. 

National Socialism, as we have pointed out before, is not the result 
of the Treaty of Versailles. Nor has the movement as such anything to 
do with St. Germain, Trianon, and Neuilly, 152 which were instrumental 
in laying the foundations for this war. Yet the present issue is, in the 
political and ideological sense a clear outcome of the political and 
ideological efforts of the victorious Allies in 1918-1919, and the result 
of their so-called order, which was (badly) organized disorder.**** 



* This resentment is little justified. The German line of the Habsburgs never per- 
mitted the Inquisition to work in their hereditary countries and while Protestants did 
suffer disadvantages (outside of Hungary) these were never of a penal character as for 
instance those imposed upon British Catholics. 

** Theodore Roosevelt, not less than Mr. Wilson, was in favor of a partition of "that 
survival." The anti-Habsburgian tradition in the United States dates from the great 
Kossuth reception in New York. Yet one might doubt whether the American public 
would have been so overenthusiastic had it known the truth about M. Kossuth's political 
views, mainly in regard to national minorities. 

*** Aeneas IV, 62S. 

****The main pillar of this ludicrous "order" was besides the League of Nation the 
so-called "Little Entente," consisting of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Rumania, who 
had replaced the "ramshackle" Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was the task of this com- 
bination of Ruritanian "democracies" to prevent Germany's expansion toward the East. 
The total incongruity of their own power in relation to this task was manifest when 



160 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

The fatal thing which happened twenty-two years ago was the victory 
of the principles of national, identitarian, ochlocracy and a spurious 
concept of "democracy" in Central and Eastern Europe.* There is only 
a very short step from national majoritarianism to National Socialism, a 
step as short as that from mortal disease to death. 

we remember that the main activity of this trio consisted in securing their problematic 
survival. This they could only hope to carry out successfully by preserving the status quo 
— in Austria and Hungary. Neither country was permitted to restore the Habsburgs to 
their throne, and Budapest and Vienna were repeatedly warned that such an action 
would constitute a casus belli. (Hungarian revisionism constituted another "danger.") 

Yet it must be conceded that the states of the Little Entente were so weak and 
artificial that a restoration in Vienna and Budapest would have made them melt away like 
the snow in the sun. The only crystallizing factor in the Danubian area were the Habs- 
burgs and the Czech. Serb and Rumanian politicians were stupid enough to let them- 
selves be used by Hitler as stooges. When the day of reckoning came Czechoslovakia 
and Rumania surrendered without fighting a shot. Yugoslavia almost immediately lost 
two thirds of her army which went over to the German side. Only the disillusioned, but 
brave Serbs fought on. Yet the "ramshackle" Danubian monarchy fought valiantly for 
four and a half years. 

Today certain Czechs are agitating again for the status quo in Central Europe. Yet if 
the Danubian area should be solidified into a harmonious whole then Austria and 
Hungary must have the right to choose their rulers after their own heart. If self-deter- 
mination were again to be called a casus belli then one can safely deduct that a restora- 
tion of "Czechoslovakia" or "Yugoslavia" in its pristine form and its previous structure 
must be all means be avoided. In Central Europe only solidly founded states have a 
right to exist, not provisional establishments which crumble at the first opportunity 
and serve as steppingstones to German expansion. 

* The treaties of 1919 and 1920 were, significantly enough, the first major pacts 
between Christian powers which omitted the invocation of the Holy Trinity. 



PART III 

CASE HISTORIES 

A. THE GERMANIES 

B. THE UNITED STATES 



"In reality everybody shares a guilt in everything, yet people are not aware 
of it. If they would know it, Paradise would come to Earth immediately." 
— Dostoyevski, Brothers Karamazov. 



I 

THE GERMAN SCENE 



Corruptio optimi pessima. 

"We all love to stray along the edge of a precipice." 
— Krizhanitch. 

We were guided by various reasons in picking out the Germanies as 
a subject for a case history in our political cultural analysis. Germany 
is first of all as das Reich der Mitte (the central realm) truly central 
in a geographical sense ; halfway between Paris and Moscow, Rome and 
Stockholm, London and Bucharest, Madrid and Helsingfors it is basically 
different from the marginal states in the European framework, as, for 
instance, Ireland, Portugal, Greece or Norway. The German people, not 
unlike the Russian, has furthermore the proclivity to think through to 
the bitter end every accepted thought, coming from within or without, 
and to deduct every ultimate conclusion from such an ideology. This 
at least is a fundamentally Catholic trait in the German character which 
values logical honesty higher than prudence. It similarly follows out the 
logic of its heresies. If we look therefore at the reductio ad absurdum of 
the great heresies in either the purely religious or the political sphere, 
we have to look at Germany. 

This function of the Germanies may have its extremely unpleasant 
consequences within that country or in its environments — • consequences 
which everybody familiar with heresies must expect, but it is a function 
of the utmost necessity and even "usefulness" for the world at large, 
notwithstanding the fact that these evolutions each time cost millions 
of human lives. The greatest sufferers are after all the Germans them- 

163 



164 THE MENACE OF THE HEED 

selves. The Anglo Saxon might gloat over such an uncompromising and 
extremist attitude and pride himself with his great gift for compromise, 
but one has nevertheless to be grateful for the existence of a country 
where the devil has been pictured as walking about naked, with horns 
on a pig's head, and a fiery tongue dangling down on his hairy chest — 
a devil neither subtle, nor veiled, a devil as Diirer has drawn him side by 
side with the wandering, pensive knight. 153 

But in order to understand the German scene more accurately we must 
go back in history as far as Christmas day of a.d. 800. On this feast 
Charlemagne, King of the Germanic Franks, was crowned Holy Roman 
Emperor by Pope Leo III in Rome. His realm included all nations of 
the Latin Rite, with the exception of the inhabitants of the British Isles. 
He was truly the ruler of the Occident and he planned, by marrying the 
daughter of the Byzantine Emperor, to unite Christendom in East and 
West under one crown and one sword. His secular rule would have 
supplemented the spiritual rule of the Pope in Rome. The schism 
between East and West was at that time only a menace. The Millennium 
of Christendom seemed even then to be waiting "just around the corner." 
But disillusionment was to come instead. 

Two generations later we behold the Carolingian Empire consisting 
now of three parts : France, Germany, and a weird realm stretching from 
the mouths of the Rhine down to Naples, thus comprising the Nether- 
lands, Alsace-Lorraine, Switzerland and Italy. This "Lotharingian" 
Empire is next divided, twenty-seven years later, between the West 
Franks (French) and the East Franks (Germans), in such a way that 
the Germans receive control over Italy. This is the reason why the 
German and not the French rulers become Holy Roman Emperors, 
successors of Caesar and the Imperatores Augusti. Thus we see the Holy 
Roman Emperor as primus inter pares among the other European rulers ; 
he was the Senior Monarch in Christendom and the worldly arm of 
the Papacy. 

The German people shared with pride and pleasure this distinction 
bestowed upon its ruler. In spite of the frequent wars and altercations 
between Pope and Emperor, and the popular hatred between Germans 
and Italians, the position of the Emperor remained legally unchanged. 
There was nothing farcical about the institution of the Empire, as 
Voltaire would have it when he remarked that it was neither Holy nor 
Roman nor an Empire. Even when its existence became fictional it still 
served the purpose of giving to its inhabitants an appeal to a spiritual 



THE GERMAN SCENE 165 

mission and bestowing on them a certain supranational character which 
restrained them from making efforts to germanize the French of Lorraine 
or the Slavs of Bohemia and Lusatia. The name Germany (Germania) 
had almost disappeared from common usage and the word Deutschland, 
propagated by Luther, hardly became popular before the end of the 
First Reich (1806). There was a great diversity within the boundaries 
of the Empire, diversity of language, dialect, customs, dresses, and tradi- 
tions. It was a world in itself; it was the heart of Europe and its most 
respected realm. The only fixed part of the Empire was Rome and the 
Urbs was also the metropolis of Christendom. 

There was no political capital inside its borders; the emperors, who 
started out being hereditary rulers and later were elected in order to 
revert to the initial system, moved their residence from one place to 
another. We find them frequently in Vienna, but also in Prague, Inns- 
bruck, and Ghent. They were crowned in Aix-la-Chapelle, in Rome, 
Bologna, and Frankfurt. They were buried in Speyer, Germersheim, 
Wiener-Neustadt, Utrecht, and Vienna. Constantin Frantz, the great 
German "Federalist" (i.e., Anti-Centralist) declared bluntly: "The very 
idea of a German capital has to be considered as thoroughly un-German'' 
(Deutschland und der Foderalismus, Stuttgart-Berlin, 1921, p. 89). 

A strong tribal sentiment prevented unification. The rise of a "national" 
sentiment as we witness it in the West is similarly a slow process. Yet 
the local dukes and princes, in the beginning pillars of a healthy federal- 
ism, became victims of separatistic tendencies. The reaction against this 
separatism ended under the influence of the French Revolution in the 
most morbid centralized national uniformity. 

Actually one of the most difficult things to explain to non-Continentals 
is the meaning of the word Reich. In the technical sense it means 
"Empire," but there is much more to it than the mere designation of 
considerable extension. Reich indicates a realm with a specified spiritual 
character involving a metaphysical function in relation to the nations 
within the borders of the Reich as well as to the rest of the world. 
This function is the realization of the theoretical Reichsidee (Reichs- 
gedanke) which historically speaking has undergone considerable change. 
The expression "Second Reich" or "Third Reich" hints at a change — or 
should one say at a loss? — of the spiritual destiny and goal of the Empire 
and the assumption of a new character. The name Deutschland (Germany) 
never became very widespread because even materialistic Germans hardly 



166 THE MENACE OF THE HEED 

ever considered it to be in a line with other "ordinary" countries like 
Scotland, Finland, or Russia (Russland). The past embodied by the Holy 
Roman Empire left its traces on the German character. And Germany is 
thus officially still das Deutsche Reich, "in memory" of a past when all 
of Christendom honored in the Emperor the temporal overlord of 
the world. 15 * 

Keeping all that in mind we must again concentrate upon the com- 
plexities that involve the vaguest and least comprehensible thing in the 
world — the German mind, the German character. 

First of all it must be remembered that the Catholic essence of the 
Germanies, due to their specific privileges and obligations, was extremely 
strong and is still far more potent than the outsider is inclined to believe. 
Heresy has reached the Reich only through the channel of Wycliffe and 
Hus. Even the character of the Germans, on account of their existence 
in the heart of Europe, was of a catholic, i.e., universal nature.* (The 
meanings of the words "catholic" and "Catholic" will always be mutually 
inclusive.) There are only two peoples or nations with a naturally 
universal and cosmopolitan character; the Germans and the Jews. Both 
characters show the most incredible mosaic of national characteristics, 
both people were called for an eminent metaphysical mission and both 
experienced a fall which is comparable only to that of the Angels.** 

The universality*** and uniqueness of the natural German character — 
uncorrupted by political or religious heresies — may be largely due to 
the fact that there is no nation in all of Europe which has so many direct 
and indirect neighbors. 155 In the latter group we count all those nations 
that contain a fair and sizable amount of Germans within their borders 
— no mere emigre's, but German settlers, who have actually transmitted 
and accepted important cultural values. These two groups (A and B) 
contain the following national groups: 



1. Dutch 5. Lithuanians 9. Magyars 13. French as well as 

2. Flemings 6. Poles 10. Slovenes French Swiss and 

3. Friesians 7. Czechs 11. Italians Walloons 

4. Danes 8. Slovaks 12. Rhaeto-Romans 14. Lusatians 
and Ladinians 



* Elections of the Holy Roman (i.e., German) Emperor were events of world-wide 
significance. See, for instance, Garrett Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon, pages 202-203. 

** Yet the Jewish fall seems to be rather of a spiritual-theological than of an intellec- 
tual-characteriological nature as in the case of the Germans. 

***See also: What to Do With Germany, by Colonel T. H. Minshall (London, 1941), 
where we find an excellent revindication of the original universalist German character. 



THE GERMAN SCENE 167 

B 

15. Latvians 18. Rumanians 21. Serbs in S.E. Russia and 

16. Esthonians 19. Ukrainians 22. A great variety in the Caucasus. 

17. Russians 20. Croatians of minor groups 

In examining the German (or for that matter the Jewish) character we 
find that the German has specific traits in common with almost every 
other European nation ; he is supposed to have the profundity and depth 
of the Russian, the cleanliness of the Scandinavian, the thoroughness of 
the French, the linguistic abilities of the Pole, the melancholy of the 
Magyar, the gravity of the Dutch, the engineering genius of the British, 
the metaphysical speculation of the Near Easterner, the loyalty of the 
Swiss, the brutality of the Serb and the pragmatism of the Czech. Many 
of these qualities stand in a certain contradiction to each other and it 
must be admitted that the German as well as the Jewish character are 
highly contradictory in themselves. 156 How could even these paradoxes be 
avoided if a synthesis of the European character is to be given? And 
does not a collection of such varying contradictory traits indicate the 
lack of a harmonious and rounded character ? How, one might ask, can a 
nation with "borrowed" characteristics be sympathetic to others? The 
world-wide unpopularity of Germans and Jews* is in part the result of the 
fact that both nations are sufficiently alike to every other race nation to 
evoke immediate dislike, wrath, and uneasiness.** After all one prefers 
to have a dog for a pet rather than a monkey (or even a cat), the latter 
being too nearly like human beings in certain ways to be truly 
attractive.*** 

In the multitude of forms of the different German tribal and indi- 
vidual characters we have to look for the reason of the puzzle of "Ger- 
many: Jekyll or Hyde?" The unification has thrown the most different 
tribal characters together and has brought chaos to the eternal German 
mosaic. The Christmas tree and Stille Nacht hardly harmonizes with 
the concentration camp. The Hofbrau of Munich is alien in spirit to the 
blueprint of a Messerschmitt. Yet "Germany" is a subcontinent like 



* Yiddish is nothing but a form of Medieval German with additional Hebrew, Slavic, 
and Latin words. It shares with German a great flexibility and inner freedom. German 
is not in vain the richest European language, a magnificent instrument of expression 
standing in its character nearest to Russian. Nothing is easier than translating from any 
European language into German, nothing more difficult than translating from a rich 
and personal German into another idiom. 

** This explains the mutual dislike of certain Britishers and Americans. Similarity 
(caricature!) lies at the bottom of this antagonism. 

*** See the witty analysis of man and dog in Thorstein Veblen's "Theory of the. 
Leisure Class." 



168 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

India where Ghandi's campaign of nonviolence differs so radically from 
the memories of the terrible slaughter of Lucknow. . . . 

The German is thus the best case of the European as such. But just 
because his character is not as extreme as that of the marginal European 
(Spaniard, Russian, Irish, Bulgarian) he becomes more easily a victim 
to objective things. This service to the objects — as Keyserling already 
has remarked — can go to inhuman and superhuman extremes. The Ger- 
man puts himself "under," subordinates himself to the things and 
thoughts. Ich diene — "I serve" — the device of the German Emperors of 
the Luxemburg dynasty, passed on to the Princes of Wales in its German 
form and expressed an idea which is not only German and British, but 
one of the best European and Christian traditions. 157 The danger of this 
attitude lies in the possibility of a complete surrender to an utterly nega- 
tive cause, a surrender which unfortunately did not occur recently as an 
isolated case in German history. For the German "causes" become almost 
automatically sacred ; they receive almost immediately an aura of tran- 
scendental immanence, and the German will subordinate every category 
of his existence to the one dominant idea, never hesitating to sacrifice 
human lives (his own or others) for the sacred cause. This seriousness is 
also applicable to minor matters; if anything is accepted as duty 
(Pfiicht) or task (Aufgabe) it has to be served with energy and determi- 
nation. This is part of the secret of German efficiency.* 

This efficiency, of course, is apparent in every domain, and as the con- 
tact between the West and the German countries is made in the three 
most unpleasant aspects of human life — non-Catholic philosophies, com- 
mercial travelers,** and mechanized soldiers — the world has begun to 
look at the war machinery and militarism as something typically German. 
Yet even such a bellicose state as Prussia fought only three consecutive 
wars in the 99 years from 1815 till 1914 and they all took place between 
1863 and 1871, while England in her far-flung Empire was involved in 
eight wars of a larger scale, France in six, Russia in seven, and the 
United States in three such bloody enterprizes.*** 



* The other part of the secret is the rare combination of imagination and organization. 

** The North German commercial traveler is indeed a highly unpleasant species of 
the homo germanicus. He displays a high-pressure salesmanship which beats even his 
American colleague. Max Scheler in his Vber die Ursachen des Deutsckenhasses, pub- 
lished in 1917, has a difficult job in defending the German commis voyageur. 

*** Austria Hungary was engaged in seven "foreign" wars. If we do not count the War 
of Secession as a "war," we must equally cancel the so-called Prusso-Austrian war of 
1866 which was an inter-German war on the basis of a Federal Execution of practically 
all German states under Austrian leadership against rebellious Prussia on account of her 
defiance of the Frankfort Diet. 



THE GERMAN SCENE 169 

Yet efficiency is not limited to the military affairs. The German's skill 
in the manufacture of high-precision instruments and chemicals, cameras, 
telescopes, and guns ; his ability to build concrete highways, skyscrapers, 
and other material objects or gadgets; his talent as a historian, phi- 
lologist, race driver, and novelist is supplemented by metaphysical specu- 
lations, a (sometimes vague) symbolism and a depth (Tiefe) which fre- 
quently reminds us of Russia. 158 

We can experience this depth in so many of the great German Cath- 
olics, such as Meister Eckehardt, Suso, Tauler, Hildegarde von Bingen, 
Albertus Magnus, Guardini, Przywara. There is no doubt that their re- 
moteness from Latin clarte harbors many dangers. Heretics in both the 
political and the religious sphere, have interpreted these masters in their 
own way. The German love for Mystery and the Mysterious — a senti- 
ment so alien to ochlocratic culture — is in itself no evil. It may be even 
a promise for a better future. 

The Germanic parts of the Holy Roman Empire were not infected with 
heretical thought before the fifteenth century. But John Wycliffe deeply 
influenced Jan Hus, professor at the oldest University of the Empire, 
with his ideas and thus Prague, for a long time Imperial Residence, became 
the center of revolutionary ideas. Hussitism comprised all elements 
which shaped the history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 
Evangelical skepticism, pragmatism, nationalism and later on ochlocratic 
and communist tendencies characterized this dangerous heresy, which 
was the sanguinary forerunner of all identitarian revolutions to come. 
This eruption of the Czech volcano* could be crushed only with a max- 
imum of force and the Hussite armies, under the leadership of Zizka, a 
Czech Cromwell, could be defeated only after his death. Catholicism was 
for the first time successfully challenged, and the issue was dragged into 



* The Germans, who live in the Sudeten mountains and in the hills of the Bohmer- 
wald, were not affected. The "racial" character of this Czech movement was very 
pronounced. 

Hussitism celebrated its "revival" in October and November, 1918, when the Austro- 
Hungarian monarchy broke down. Czechs left the Catholic Church out of sheer 
patriotism and anti-Catholic propaganda had the full support of the Government. 
Almost half a million people joined the "democratic" Neo-Hussite Church. Even a 
statue of our Lady was demolished as "symbol of Austrian domination." Catholicism 
was accused of being a Germanic religion! 

It is in connection with Hussitism that the Adamites appeared on the scene in fifteenth- 
century Bohemia. They were strongly communistic, practised nudity and community 
of women. They became finally a menace to the Taborite wing of the Hussites and 
Zizka had to persecute them with the same brutality as he did the Catholics. 



170 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

the political field. The poison of this heresy, suppressed only by force, 
continued to spread in secret. It was only a question of time when a new 
heresy would arise, ready to sweep over the endless northern plains as an 
enormous tidal wave. It came less than a hundred years later in the form 
of Lutheranism. 

The time for its coming was propitious. The Papacy was weak and 
Humanism had prepared the ground for a nationalist movement. The 
dukes craved for greater independence from the Emperor, who, in a 
certain measure, was a Catholic executive. The knights were impover- 
ished as a result of the rise of the commercial cities, and the patriarchal 
characteristics of serfdom were on the wane. The traders and bankers 
were weary of the ecclesiastical restrictions on interest. 

It is true that it was Calvin who accelerated the rise of an urban, 
bourgeois culture in the West, in the Palatinate, in Switzerland, in 
France, in the Netherlands, and even beyond the seas — in Scotland, 
England, and in America. Luther on the other hand was more successful 
in de-Europeanizing the Germanies (a process which unfortunately is 
still continuing) and in undermining the unifying power of an emperor, 
who like Charles V, was equally interested in driving out the Turks 
from Hungary, fighting the Moors in Tunisia, getting crowned by the 
Pope in Bologna, studying the questions of native rights in Peru and 
Mexico, and evangelizing the islands in the Caribbean. 

Luther, imbued with a fanatical hatred against everything non-Ger- 
man, and with a particular dislike for Rome, intended to create a Ger- 
man church of a local character. This bourgeois sentimental idea of a 
high-strung Augustinian, enveloped in ecstatic Germanism, could never 
please a Catholic cosmopolitan such as Charles V. Luther's narrowness 
was rather aggravated by a frantic emotionalism of which a certain 
German type (Wagner, Hitler, Novalis) is well capable. He was pos- 
sessed of a more Slavic than Germanic grudge against Latin clarity and 
legalism; the meticulous adherence to the iron laws of logic, dry and 
well-weighted argumentation of a gradual and conclusive nature were 
alien to him. His whole appearance reminds one rather of a Prussian 
N.C. officer or of a Slovakian butcher, than of a West German intellectual. 
His bulging eyes and unkempt hair; his fat neck and bellowing voice; 
his inordinate love for food, drink, and sex ; his coarse speech and eruptive 
nature are characteristic of certain low-class East Europeans. When he 
says : "I do not admit that my doctrine can be judged by anyone, not by 



THE GERMAN SCENE 171 

the angels," one could almost imagine hearing Hitler speak. His statement 
that "Reason is contrary to faith" strikes the same Eastern Manichaean 
note as the declaration that "It is impossible to harmonize faith and 
reason." 159 It is the same type of thinking and arguing as Ludendorff's 
irrational and poetical Gotteserkenntnis im Blute, "God known in the 
blood," and the never expressed but omnipresent suspicion of good Na- 
tional Socialists that abstract brainwork is intrinsically "Jewish."* 

Within the Holy Roman Empire Lutheranism had far-reaching effects. 
The very essence of the empire, which was necessarily Catholic, was 
challenged. The spiritual link between the "Roman" emperor and the 
Protestant princes was naturally weakened and German federalism 
evolved slowly into separatism. Wars between the Sacra Maiestas Romana 
and rebellious princes increased in frequency. These provincial chieftains, 
after the loot of ecclesiastic property, were now considerably richer and 
more powerful than before, and so, too, their influence in their own 
countries had gained, thanks to their new role as "heads" of the evangeli- 
cal churches. The rapid capitalistic development of the Protestant cities, 
due to the benevolent attitude of Lutheranism and Calvinism toward 
the taking of interests and dividends, resulted in a financial strengthening 
of the North and the Northeast. In consequence, defection from the 
Church came as a tidal wave. While the Catholic Church in England 
fought a long and hopeless war against the moneybag and the Whigs, 
lasting almost ISO years, the destruction of Catholicism in northern Ger- 
many took hardly two decades. Protestantism had swept the country like 
wildfire. 

The Habsburg dynasty, at that time already rulers of the Empire 
by heredity, rather than by election, bolstered up their sinking- 
power in Central Europe through the acquisition of two kingdoms 
by marriage, one within and the other from without the Reich; 
the annexation of the lands of the Bohemian crown 160 (Bohemia, 
Moravia. Silesia) strengthened the imperial influence not less than 
Western Hungary. These countries, together with the Austrian 
Alpine provinces, formed a coherent domain along the southeast 
border of the empire. Vienna, situated near the point where the three 
"hereditary countries" met, increased in importance. It was here and 



* Luther, who seemed to be friendly toward the Jews in the earlier part of his life 
developed later an unmitigated antijudaism. The violence of his language reminds one 
strongly of Julius Streicher's writings and pamphlets. 



172 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

in the neighboring parts of southern and western Germany that German 
culture continued to flourish after the partial victory of the Reformation. 
The Northeast was barely Germanized;* even today we find Slavs still 
speaking their Lusatian vernacular sixty miles from Berlin. 

In the North, the Reformation had an asphyxiating effect on further 
cultural development. But while the South and the "Habsburg hereditary 
countries," within and without the Empire, enjoyed the splendor of the 
Renaissance and the Baroque and the flourishing progress of all the arts 
under the banner of the Counter Reformation, the northeast section of 
the country focused its interest onto commerce and the military 
sciences. Yet the respect of the Germans for the Empire and the 
imperial idea, in spite even of the Reformation, was not entirely dead. 
It needed the cooperation of three powers to bring about the downfall 
of the Holy Roman Empire, the First Reich of the Germans. These 
powers were Sweden, France, and the traitor in the German midst: 
Prussia. 

It is one of the major tragedies of history that France, the "Oldest 
Daughter of the Church," which produced so many great saints (besides 
many impressive heretics), became the traditional enemy of the Holy 
Roman Empire and therefore of the German people. France always 
professed a curious dualistic attitude inasmuch as she considered the 
spiritual and the political spheres as two distinctly different worlds 
which had better not mix or get near to each other. While the German 
delights in the fact, that one idea or ideology penetrates every domain 
of human activity, the French are too keenly aware of the frailties of 
the human flesh and despair of ever seeing the "world" completely 



* This has nothing to do with the Limes-theory of Mr. Hilaire Belloc or Professor 
Gotz Briefs. The gist of this theory is roughly the following one: only countries that 
stood under Roman domination were able to withstand the seducing voice of the Re- 
formers. Only the discipline of the Roman background was able to keep the flock in 
the sheepfold. 

Yet if we study the facts we see that this theory hardly holds good. There are the 
Catholic Highlanders in Scotland, the Catholic Irish, the Catholic Westphalians and 
Ermelanders, the Catholic Czechs, Slovakians, Transylvanian Magyars, Ruthenians, 
Lithuanians, Latgalians, North Bavarians, and West Hanoverians. On the other hand 
we have the Protestant English, West and North Swiss, Wuerttembergians, the Mo- 
hammedan Albanians and Bosnians, the Huguenots, the Albigenses and Mohammedan 
North Africa. 

** Cf. Rudolf Nadolny's Germanisierung oder Slawisierung (Berlin, 1928). This au- 
thor, a German diplomat, repeatedly defended the thesis that the difference between 
Prussians and Czechs is merely accidental (linguistic) and not "racial." 



THE GERMAN SCENE 173 

permeated by the Idgos. On the other hand there is little doubt that the 
German in his overoptimism, and especially the German Catholic, has 
committed great and fateful blunders which the cautious French have 
avoided. {One of these blunders, carried out with great enthusiasm, was 
the establishment of a Catholic Party in the Germanies.) 161 

Their complete lack of religious loyalty in political matters explains 
why rulers like Francis I, Louis XIV, and later the two Napoleons, 
pursued a policy of brutal intrigue against the Holy Roman Empire, 
fostering all separatistic tendencies within its borders (which meant 
support for the Protestants) and forming coalitions with Calvinists, 
Lutherans, and Mohammedans. It is true that Francis I felt "encircled" 
like William II and considered his wars, waged with the aid of an 
energetic Pope and Algerian pirates, to be of a defensive nature ; but in 
this game of encirclement the tables were later turned and the coalition 
between France, the Protestant anti-imperial powers of the North and 
the great power of the East — first the Islamic Turks and later the 
Schismatic Russians — became a permanent institution. 162 

The Electorate of Brandenburg became the classical ally of France 
within the borders of the Empire. This duchy was situated in the North- 
eastern marshes and was ruled by the Hohenzollerns ; it had always 
been one of the least cultured regions of the imperial dominions and 
was only superficially Germanized. 163 The population was nevertheless 
industrious and laborious, brave as soldiers but lacking "backbone" in 
social life. The Electors of Brandenburg showed a marked tendency 
toward absolutism, an inclination they could not live up to because the 
most important element for a totalitarian state, the middle class, was 
extremely small and unimportant. The capital, Berlin, was even at the 
middle of the seventeenth century an insignificant place and nothing but 
the center of a happy-go-lucky, inefficient feudal state. 

Yet the change of the social structure of Brandenburg was to come 
by the end of the seventeenth century and France was again instru- 
mental in this evolution. Louis XIV gave every imaginable help to the 
rebellious North German Protestants, and mainly to the Electors of 
Brandenburg, in order to weaken his great hereditary enemy — the Em- 
peror in Vienna. But in his French affairs he was of an uncompromising 
strictness in religious matters and his revocation of the Edict of Nantes 
resulted in a mass emigration of Huguenots. Some of them went to Eng- 
land, Holland, America, and South Africa, but the large bulk fled to 



174 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

Brandenburg where they were enthusiastically welcomed by Frederick 
William, the "Great Elector," an uncle by marriage to William III of 
England.* 

The influx of French Huguenots not only strengthened the country 
commercially but it also gave to it the long desired bourgeois element 164 
and in addition a small group of noblemen with great military experi- 
ence and skill. These Calvinists revolutionized Brandenburg. A powerful 
state rose now with almost American speed from the monotonous plains 
along the Polish border, an efficient and ambitious state drilling soldiers, 
building canals, erecting workshops; Brandenburg thus became a coun- 
try of shopkeepers and tax collectors, yet it lacked music and sentiment, 
romance and joy. For decades to come Berlin had a pseudo-French at- 
mosphere, like Bucharest or Belgrade. Theodor Fontane (himself of 
Huguenot descent) estimated that about fifty per cent of Berliners were 
French at the beginning of the eighteenth century. There is no doubt 
that Calvinism, for some time even the religion of the Hohenzollerns, 
was at least as important as Lutheranism in forming the "Prussian" 
character and the soul of Berlin. 165 

The Electors of Brandenburg not only owed fealty to the Emperor 
but were also vassals of the kings of Poland in their capacity of dukes of 
Prussia. They had inherited this duchy, which was to all practical pur- 
poses an oversea possession, from the last duke. The Teutonic knights 
and their grandmaster (a Hohenzollern) had apostasized by 1525, and 
the latter assumed the title of Duke of Prussia, after having mar- 
ried and founded a local dynasty. These dukes were as little independent 
of Poland as the grandmasters, and so when the Electors of Branden- 
burg inherited the duchy it still remained a Polish fief. 



* The "Great Elector" had spent his youth in Holland and when William of Orange 
invaded England his uncle's soldiers helped him to subdue that unfortunate island. 

It is important to remember that France's (and later on England's) foreign help given 
to the traitorous Brandenburgians and Prussians is a matter which is not strongly em- 
phasized in German textbooks. While English Catholics remained loyal to their non- 
Catholic ruler in the period of Spanish "aggression" the German Protestants never hesitated 
to make use of foreign assistance against their Emperor. Even the most nationalistic 
Protestants do not blush when they worship Gustavus Adolphus and the anniversary of 
his death is celebrated in Protestant Churches. On the tricentenary of the Battle of 
LUtzen (1932) the German Army and German authorities commemorated the day of 
German defeat and Protestant victory in all solemnity. It would be interesting to see 
the reaction of the British public if Catholics would celebrate the coronation of Philip 
II! The popular forgery of English history is a pious little fraud in comparison to the 
gross, fantastic, and shameless misinterpretation — Umdeutung as they call it — of 
German history. 



THE GERMAN SCENE 175 

Yet the ambitions of Frederick III aimed higher than those of his 
father, the "Great Elector," who had been content to be the tyrant of a 
semifeudal dependency of the empire. Frederick wanted to be a king. It 
was out of question that a local administrator of the Empire, however 
important or influential he might be, could assume the royal title which 
clearly indicated sovereignty of power. But one man found a way out 
of this dilemma and one order persuaded the Emperor to accept it; the 
man was Leibnitz and the order, the Society of Jesus.* The solution 
was that the Margrave-Elector of Brandenburg became king in Prussia, 
thus unequivocally demonstrating the fact that this title had only a 
courtesy value within the borders of the Empire. 

This new kingdom of Prussia not only shared in the general material 
"progress" of the Protestant North, but thanks to the proportionally 
large, ambitious, and puritanical middle class of Calvinistic character, 
it achieved a leading position. "The practical, the useful, and the neces- 
sary alone mattered," said Constantin Frantz about this new "Prussia." 
Frederick I (as Elector Frederick III) was succeeded by King Frederick 
William I who is generally considered to be the founder of the Prussian 
bureaucracy. His administration was still largely French. The estates of 
the nobility were taxed, the principle of obligatory education was layed 
down, the standing army (supplemented by press gangs) was increased, 
and the development of the country in the direction of a commercial and 
military bureaucracy of an industrial type gained momentum. France 
at this time was still the classical ally. "France is one of our most pow- 
erful allies," wrote Frederick II in his Political Testament** in the 
year 1752. 

The Emperor, limited more and more to his "Hereditary countries," 
even though frequently victorious in the numerous wars against Prussia, 
never definitely gained the upper hand. The Austrians had neither enough 
ambition nor sufficient grim determination to crush the pitiless enemy 
who adopted a purely Machiavellian and utilitarian policy. Under 



* The Prussian Kings were grateful to the Jesuits for their intervention. Frederick II, 
as it appears from his Political Testament (page 32 of the 1920 edition by Dr. Volz), 
feared nevertheless the Jesuits, and considered them to be pro-Austrian. Yet noblesse 
oblige. When the order was dissolved in 1773 Prussia and Russia alone refused to pro- 
claim the dissolution, and thus these two "provinces" of the Society were able to survive 
the interregnum. It was the privilege of the bourgeois parliamentarian German govern- 
ment of 1872 to exile the Jesuits. One sees that Royal Prussia was in some respects more 
liberal than England in the eighteenth century and the same can be said about the 
Russian autocracy. 

** Page 44, edition of 1920, edited by Dr. G. B. Volz. 



176 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

Frederick II (who was culturally all through his lifetime a Frenchman)* 
the old alliance with France went on the rocks, the flow of subsidies 
stopped, and it was now England who continued to finance and to feed 
the viper on her bosom. It never pays to support traitors. 

Of course there was also genuine admiration for Prussia in northern 
Europe; Anglo Saxons, impressed by her efficiency and successes, saw 
in the long drawn-out struggle between the Catholic Emperor and the 
Protestant King a duel between the two great principles of darkness 
and light, superstition and enlightenment, backwardness and progress, 
intolerance and liberality. "Decent" people on the other side of the 
channel and ocean preferred to back the rotting, syphilitic friend of 
Voltaire, who was basically an enemy of true Germandom, 166 rather than 
the benevolent and humorous Empress of Schonbrunn,** and the Napo- 
leonic wars brought a further strengthening of the Prussian position.*** 

The Polish partitions had in the meantime secured for Prussia the 
province of Pomerelia (the so-called "Corridor") and Danzig. Even prior 
to 1815, solid Prussian territory stretched from the river Elbe to the 



* Otto Forst de Battaglia in his Blut und Erbe shows that the overwhelming major- 
ity of Frederick's ancestors were French. Frederick II never spoke German properly. 
He used either French or a lingua franca containing French and German elements. His 
German spelling was deplorable as it was fantastic. Like Friedrich Nietzsche he hated 
and despised Germans and worshiped everything French. Like Nietzsche he is also one 
of the great Nazi heroes. Carlyle admired him without reservation. 

** One witnessed frequently the most amazing reaction of "average" Anglo Saxons 
who were delighted by their political impressions collected in Germany. The gist of their 
experience was the cleanliness of public conveniences, the punctuality of trains and the 
quality of the super highways. French tourists who are more critical were less often 
fooled by the material aspects than certain American aeromechanics who cannot dis- 
tinguish between material and moral issues. 

Professor Brogan writes: "Britain has regarded the unification of Germany under 
Prussia (once it was achieved) with approval; it spread Protestant civilization over a 
wider area and was in tune with the spirit of the age. It was; but that spirit was already 
different from what the optimistic Victorians thought. As John Stuart Mill saw, the 
victory of Prussia was no matter for rejoicing among Liberals. But the illusions of 
1866 were still lively in 1919." (Italics ours.) France Under the Republic (1870-1939), 
New York 1940, page SS6. 

*** This Kingdom of Prussia was naturally rather Brandenburgian than Prussian, 
rather Berlinian than KSnigsbergian. The real Prussian (frequently a South German 
colonist) is far more attractive than the Berlinian petit bourgeois, who is one of the 
most evil representatives of Northern Germany. (The aborigenes of Prussia, on the other 
side, the Pruzzi, who worshiped their gods Pompillos and Perkunos and not Wotan or 
Donnar, were relatives of the Latvians and Lithuanians. Their language became extinct 
at about the same time as Cornish.) 

If we refer from now on to Prussians or to the process of Prussianization we mention 
these terms only in connection with the Kingdom of Prussia as a whole. Protestantism, 
Militarism, Bourgeoisism, Democratism, Technicism are rather Berlinian and megalo- 
politan than East Prussian and agrarian — apart from the fact that the whole Ermeland 
in East Prussia is Catholic. So is one full third of Danzig. 



THE GERMAN SCENE 177 

Lithuanian border. The army was enlarged by the adoption of general 
conscription, for the adulation of France and her institutions had 
obviously not ceased. But this army was neither as brilliant, nor as 
"Prussian," as some people would have us believe. It was the Archduke 
Charles of Austria who finally succeeded in beating Napoleon for the 
first time (at Aspern) and the great "Prussian" military and civil 
leaders like Gneisenau, Scharnhorst Hardenberg, Bliicher, and Stein 
were without exception non-Prussians. Gneisenau was of Austrian origin, 
Stein came from Nassau, Hardenberg and Scharnhorst were Hanoverians, 
Bliicher came from Mecklenburg and so did Moltke. The last named was 
originally a Dane, while Yorck was of English ancestry. Imagination and 
inventiveness were never great Prussian virtues. 

The abdication of Francis II as Holy Roman Emperor, and his 
assumption of the title of an Austrian Emperor, fortified the Prussian 
position in spite of her great military defeats. At the Congress of Vienna 
Prussia was rewarded with the Catholic bishoprics on the Rhine and 
Austria finally renounced all rights to her possessions north of Switzer- 
land in the vicinity of the French border. Thus the Hohenzollerns of 
Prussia, in place of the Habsburgs, became the new protectors of the 
Reich against French aggression. Their new duties involved new rights 
and aspirations. 

The "Reich" had now ceased to exist, but the German League (an 
inter-German diet with its seat in Frankfort) still gave the impression 
of some sort of unity. Thirty-five sovereign princes and four imperial 
cities were represented in that assembly which met regularly under the 
presidency of the Austrian delegate, who alone had the privilege to smoke 
during the sessions. The hegemony of the Habsburgs and of Austria was 
gravely challenged but it was still a profound reality. The "progressive" 
elements of the Diet (with the exception of the extreme Left) expected 
the centralistic unification of the Germanies by Prussia and offered the 
Imperial Crown repeatedly (openly as well as in secret) to Frederick 
William III and Frederick William IV. The former expressed the view 
that he would consider it preposterous to accept the German crown (a 
Holy Roman crown was already out of question in that age of national- 
ism) as long as the Habsburgs resided in Vienna, and Frederick William 
IV replied to the delegation headed by Eduard von Simson, that he 
would accept the dignity only if it would be the expressed wish of the 
majority of sovereign princes. 



178 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

The herdist nationalists, who already regarded Austria, on account of 
her non-Germanic majority, as unfit to lead Germandom, were more 
active than ever. But historically minded people, with respect for tradi- 
tions, still refused to consider the Prussians as qualified to assume such 
an important role. Personally the Prussians were extremely disliked by 
the Southerners on account of their aggressiveness and boastful char- 
acter.* The casino in Baden-Baden still had, in 1840, a poster at the 
entrance saying : "Dogs and Prussians are not admitted." And the Austro- 
Bavarian hatred against Prussia is too well known to be explained in 
detail. Many of the jokes — jokes often not in the least of a kindly 
nature — against Prussians are similar to those coined in England and 
on the Continent against the successful entrepreneur type of the Western 
Hemisphere. Thus the Prussians were not only accused of primitive 
barbarism but also of possessing the unpleasant attributes of parvenues, 
a species equally disliked through all the world. 167 Neither did anybody 
consider the possibility that Austria would ever accept Prussian leader- 
ship. Thus the nationalistic herdists dreamt of a "Little German" (klein- 
deutsch) Empire which would exclude Austria, Vienna, and the Habs- 
burgs. The "Great Germans" (Grossdeutsche) stood for the restoration 
of the First Reich under the natural domination of Vienna. Many of the 
conservative Protestants accepted this basically Catholic program. 

The fundamental mistake of the national herdists was based upon 
a thorough misunderstanding of the nature and mission of the German 
people, whose function is to be just central European and not to form 
a "Nation" in the Western sense. The marginal races on the periphery 
may take on unequivocal forms of national existence (without, of course, 
becoming a prey to odious nationalism), but Germandom, just as the 
Church, must keep its catholic, universalist, and co-ordinating keynote. 
The "Prussians," hardened into an egalitarian monolith, never understood 
the depth and fullness of the German mission properly, and it was there- 
fore their sad task to distract the Germanies from their true destiny and 
to become the terrible instrument of the Great German Betrayal through 
National Socialism, for which the Germans as well as the rest of Europe 
are now paying so bitter a price. 

The "German League" already was a step in the wrong direction. 
It was a definite break with the idea of the First Reich, yet even the 



♦This is nothing else but the advertising and propagating character of Commercial 
Man who has something to sell. 



THE GERMAN SCENE 179 

Bund had its supranational aspects. The King of Great Britain was 
a member of the League due to the fact that he was also the King of 
Hanover; the Kings of Holland as sovereigns of Luxemburg and the 
kings of Denmark as dukes of Holstein and Lauenburg participated 
through their delegates in the activities of the Diet of Frankfort. But 
the Austrian Emperor as well as the King of Prussia had possessions 
which were not represented in the League such as Hungary, Galicia, 
Dalmatia, and on the other side, the two Prussias and Poznan.* 

The struggle for supremacy — Austria in a defensive and Prussia in 
an offensive position — could only be decided through the sword. The 
fateful year of 1866 brought the decision which paved the way for the 
establishment of the Second Reich. The intolerable attitude of Prussia 
forced the German States to unite under Austrian leadership and to 
enact federal execution against Prussia which sabotaged the Diet of 
Frankfort. Yet it was the criminal, thanks to his superior armament, and 
not the legitimate contestant who won the engagements. Prussia defeated 
the Germanies, and that contrary to the Covenant of the Deutscher 
Bund, with the help of a foreign power — Italy. The Italians were beaten 
by the Austrians, yet the division of the Austrian armies as well as the 
inferiority of the Austrian muzzle loaders (in comparison to the Prussian 
breech loader) decided the war. 

The Prussian army had, in 1866, already introduced the modern 
breech loader (the "needle rifle"), a technical step forward which the 
Austrian ministry of war had declined to adopt on account of the fact 
that the cartridges provided with a small ignition needle frequently 
exploded during practices. The Prussians, far too Machiavellian to be 
bothered with the injuries of innocent soldiers during maneuvers, saw 
the practical advantages only and as true discipline of Bentham provided 
their armies with this sensitive explosive. The rapid firing of the Prussian 
troops gave rise to the Austrian expression, So schnell schiessen die 
Preussen nicht! ("The Prussians do not shoot that fast!"), frequently 
used to disparage gross exaggerations. 

The armies of the other German states (Bavaria, Baden, Wurttem- 
berg, Saxony, Hessen-Kassel, Hanover) were far too small to resist the 
Prussian Blitzkrieg. It was not the Prussian army as such which had 
won the war, but — as later on — the Prussian industrial armament. 
Austria lost the war largely for the reason of being predominantly an 



* The Eastern Borders of the German League were exactly those of the Holy Roman 
Empire. 



180 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

agrarian state. {Today an agrarian state has no chance whatsoever 
against an industrial state on the battlefield.) Hanover in that war had 
the same experience; the battle of Langensalza against the Prussians 
had been almost won when unfortunately her army ran short of 
ammunition. Modern wars are largely won by mechanics and engineers, 
not by generals and warriors. 

The reader ought to remember in connection with the war of 1866 
that Austrians, contrary to general belief, though polite, humorous, 
musical, and artistic, are not less virile than the North Germans and 
specially the Prussians. The saying Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube 
("Let others wage wars, but you, happy Austria, marry 1") was aimed 
at the happy policy of the Habsburgs. But through their marital ties 
they established merely legal titles to foreign countries which usually 
had to be conquered by brutal power afterward. The marriage of 
Ferdinand I to the sister of the unlucky King Louis II of Hungary and 
Bohemia was followed 100 years later by the battle of the White 
Mountain and 150 years later by Slankamen and Zenta. Austria was 
distinctly a military — not a militaristic — monarchy, which finally could 
be broken up only by the spread of herdist identitarian nationalism. 168 

It must not be forgotten that many decent-minded Prussians were in 
1866 morally shocked by the plans of their government. The Queen in 
protest against Bismarck's plans left Berlin and retired to the country. 
Yet one of the worst parts of the ensuing peace was its dictatorial char- 
acter and the series of "incorporations." 169 We see, as in Italy six years 
before, small dynasties deprived of their thrones and their countries 
annexed against the will of the population. This was not only the case 
of Hanover and the Electorate Hesse, but also of Hesse-Nassau and 
the Free City of Frankfort, whose last burgomaster, Dr. Fellner, a 
Protestant, committed suicide.* The traditional-conservative elements 
in the German countries saw clearly the approaching end of a great and 
sacred tradition,** yet the liberal and progressive circles sensed the 



* Not every conservative and "Great German" was a Catholic. Saxony, Wiirttemberg, 
and Hanover were more or less Protestant countries. The Royal House of Saxony is 
also Catholic although the country is 96 per cent Protestant. 

** A description of the highly social-minded character of the early German Conserva- 
tive Party can be found in Dr. Oscar Stillich's Die Politischen Parteien in Deutschland, 
"I. Die Konservativen," pp. 111-125. Its great doctrinary leader in the sixties was a 
baptized Jew, Julius Stahl. 



THE GERMAN SCENE 181 

beginning of a new dawn, the coming of a centralized "Germany" under 
identitarian rule. 170 

The year 1871 sees the establishment of the Second Reich in Versailles. 
While a "German Empire" (Deutsches Reich) and a German Emperor 
{not: Emperor of Germany!) are solemnly proclaimed in the former 
residence of the absolutistic French monarchs, France herself is on the 
way to become the Third Republic of moneybags and progressive identi- 
tarians. 171 From 1866 till 1871 the Church had politically suffered four 
major defeats: Sadova, Sedan and the establishment of the French 
Republic, the exclusion of Austria from the Second Reich and the loss 
of the Papal State. The period immediately following these exterior 
defeats is characterized also by an inner sterility and stagnation. There 
was an all-time low of Catholic influence in all spheres of life. National 
Liberalism (Bismarck's party too was called "national liberal"), with a 
distinct, bourgeois, anticlerical, progressive tinge, became the ruling 
political factor for all of continental Europe. 172 

Parisian France at least produced a decadent, urban culture with men 
of the type of Toulouse-Lautrec, Zola, Anatole France, Manet, Monet, 
Cezanne, Maupassant, Verlaine, Rimbaud and Baudelaire, but the Second 
Reich after its unification became as sterile as Italy after the risorgimento. 
The cultural production of the Second Reich declined rapidly under the 
growing Prussianization and actually decreased in the same ratio as 
the material production increased. Had it not been for Richard Wagner, 
who fled into the German past, thus building up a German myth which 
is partly the basis of the more sentimental side of National Socialism, the 
cultural values of Wilhelminian Germany would definitely be zero.* The 
mediocre writings of a Suderman and Wildenbruch are hardly worth 
mentioning. Nietzsche lived in a self-imposed exile in Switzerland. Only 
the dawn of the twentieth century could bring some improvement. 173 

This cultural sterility passed almost unnoticed on the part of the 
people who were busy admiring material "progress," railway stations, 
bathtubs, and medical laboratories. The billion dollars paid by France 
to Germany after the war created a commercial boom without parallel. 
Capitalism begot socialism, a movement which fitted logically into the 



* Richard Wagner as well as Cosima Wagner were both violently anti- Jewish. See 
Ernest Newman's Wagner Biography. Vol. Ill, pp. 284-287. (New York, 1941.) 

Wagner's son-in-law, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, was the greatest protagonist of 
antisemitism early in this century. (Die Grundlagen des 19. Jakrhunderts) . See also 
Richard Wagner's Das Judentum in der Musik. 



182 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

general picture of the Second Reich. Marx, together with Treitschke, was 
after all the logical child of Hegel, who in turn was an epigone of Kant 
and finally also of Descartes. But now we see an increasing worship for 
collective values. Nietzsche shouting himself hoarse in the solitude of 
Sils Maria could hardly bring relief nor start a counterrevolution. 

Marxism and nationalism coexisted peacefully in the German countries 
and it was perhaps only a question of time and circumstances when these 
two ideologies with their fervent admiration for State and Society would 
merge into one, and National Socialism would arise as a bastard child 
of Marx and Wagner-Treitschke. 

Identitarianism, growing on the Prussian plains, was victorious all 
along the line. Romanticism, tradition, and diversity were forced to beat 
a retreat in all sectors. Slowly the Germans assimilated to themselves 
these new Prussian ideals, even in the South. This assimilation was never, 
and will never, be complete but it is well known that butlers who spend 
a lifetime with their masters, accept many of their habits, and it is 
claimed that they finally resemble them physically. The German tragedy 
has its parallel in the subjection of China by the Manchus, an efficient, 
but barbaric people from the northeast corner of the Celestial Empire. 
The Prussian officials and merchants forced their manners and morals 
upon the other Germans just as the Manchu Emperors and mandarins 
forced the pigtail upon the hapless Chinese. And slowly, but assiduously, 
the Reich was transformed into a mere "state," into a single and very 
effective machine, suspicious of everything extraordinary, of everything 
not conforming to the rules. The Los-von-Rom propaganda, intended 
to eliminate the Catholics as obstacles in the uniform German picture, 
and the skillful vexation of minorities — specially the Poles — was calcu- 
lated to obliterate nationally nonhomogeneous elements. 17 * Yet the 
conservatives protested frequently against this herdist centralism. 

In spite of these efforts the federalistic character of the Imperial period 
of the Second Reich cannot be absolutely denied. The "German Emperor" 
was just a primus inter pares and soldiers swore allegiance to their 
respective kings or princes and not to the Emperor. Caricaturists could 
make fun of the Emperor in Bavaria or Baden, but not in Prussia 
where he was king. Bavaria as well as Wurttemberg and Baden also 
had their own stamps and for some time had a law which forbade the 
display of the former Imperial flag without the simultaneous display of 
the Bavarian colors. After 1919 the flying of the Reich flag was for a 
period altogether forbidden. The larger states (Bavaria, Saxony, Prussia) 



THE GERMAN SCENE 183 

even had mutual diplomatic representation and this institution was only 
abolished by the furiously centralistic National Socialists.* 

We have discussed the War and the treaty of Versailles before, so that 
we can now place the Republican Period of the Second Reich under the 
magnifying glass. It has characteristics similar to the Imperial Period, 
yet it is a slow and sly transition toward many national-socialist concep- 
tions. 175 The republican constitution of Weimar emphasized and legalized 
the already existing tendencies and trends of the nineteenth century; 
this constitution created a Reich even more "progressive," even more 
subservient to the postulates of the time. Thus the word Germany — 
Deutschland — already occurs repeatedly in that pale, soulless, demo- 
cratic document which later became the frame for the legality of Na 
tional Socialist Germany. This sad and silly document is, as a matter of 
fact, still in power, even if supplemented by many "amendments." Its 
compiler bore — nomen est omen — the name Dr. Hugo Preuss. 

William II went to Holland in exile, his Jewish friend, Albert Ballin, 
committed suicide,** but the commercial-financial-industrial character 
of the Reich was preserved. Centralism made further progress and it 
would have engulfed Germany completely, had not Alpine and royalist 
Bavaria defended her prerogatives most vigorously. In the cultural sense 
"Germany" was now most active, probably more so than any other 
European country at that time. But this postwar culture, a child of the 
inhuman suffering of the preceding years, was the most degenerate 
product of the large cities in the North, a real Asphaltkultur, as the 
Germans called it. This new culture and civilization, expressed in an 
architectonic style, in music, literature, films, plays, poems, essays and 
painting, was in itself a "perfect" thing. It could frequently boast of the 
highest artistic level. Whoever has seen the "Beggars Opera" (Dreigro- 
schenoper) in the German film version or the "Blue Angel," with Marlene 
Dietrich and Emil Jannings, knows, that these products of a strongly 
leftist culture were, in spite of their distorted ideological point of view, 



* A fair evaluation of civil liberties in the Imperial Period of the Second Reich can be 
found in Alonzo Taylor's Germany Past and Present (New York: Farrar and Rinehart), 
a useful small booklet. See also Martin Gumpert, Holle im Parodies, Stockholm, 1939, 
pp. 79-80. 

** Whatever faults William II (or most other European monarchs) had, they could 
hardly be blamed with racial prejudices as our American middle class. Pushkin, who 
served in the Imperial guards as officer, would probably have been as a quarteroon a 
humble bootblack or a redcap in Pennsylvania station had he been born in the United 
States. Dumas Pere would have been in the same boat as his octoroon son. 



184 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

of the utmost perfection. The only consolation one could derive from this 
state of affairs was, that the Catholics were forced to abandon their tradi- 
tional lethargy and to fight this really superb diabolism. 

Yet from the first it was evident to everybody possessing a deeper 
insight that the great leftist Kultur of Berlin, Hamburg, and Breslau was 
condemned to death on account of its fundamental morbidity, its nega- 
tive aspects and suicidal elements. Artistic importance alone cannot give 
moral justification to a culture ; it has to stand for final moral and eter- 
nal values or will die. The sadness and despair of the Asphaltkultur was 
depressing to such a degree, that no popular enthusiasm could be aroused 
for this monstrous outgrowth from the depths of modern city life. 

There was something sinister and menacing about these plays, dealing 
with abortions, sexual aberrations, and suicides. Even the drawings in the 
funny papers, which all stood for a definite Weltanschauung, were in- 
credibly foul in their human simplicity, cynicism, and sloppiness. A con- 
siderable sector of urban Germandom accepted Leftism with a fervor and 
grim determination which quickly reduced this ideology to absurdity. 
Yet it was all done with solemn bitterness and an almost religious con- 
viction. The products of Anglo-Saxon parlor pinks are amusing and gro- 
tesque, but the student of German cultural Leftism loses rapidly his sense 
of humor when looking in that gorgonic mirror. One must remember that 
there was still the dark shadow of a war brooding over the German 
scene and the Left redrew and reinterpreted this war in the gloomiest 
colors. There was terror and uneasiness in the cities. And in the back- 
ground there was the menace of communism made into a living reality 
by a truly class-conscious proletariat. 

The conception of a dictatorship of the proletariat never penetrated 
deeply into the conscience of Anglo-Saxon Leftism. The Pinks and Reds 
on this side of the Channel and the Atlantic always dreamt of a proletar- 
iat elevated to the level of a genuine middle class. They were far too 
bourgeois to visualize anything else. 176 Nothing of that kind existed in the 
Germanies. The German Communist proletarians desired to remain pro- 
letarians forever. Genuine efforts were made to study the possibilities to 
create an exclusively proletarian culture which, of course, like the capital- 
istic culture, was intended to be based upon mass production, mass life, 
and mass emotion.* The ardent desire to give up one's own personality 
is apparent in most urban movements. 



* Yet the Socialists and Communists considered the Weimar-Republic a good period 
of transition. They had not forgotten that it might provide them, as their ideologists 



THE GERMAN SCENE 185 

The flight of William II to Holland was in fact the signal for a general 
tiredness of personality and responsibility. People were actually prepared 
to hand over their fate and the shaping of their personalities to groups 
or group leaders. 177 The famous Fichrerprinzip — principle of leadership 
— as understood in the modern, national-socialist sense, is just another 
aspect of mass collectivism. 178 Only the very superficial spectator will see 
in it any traces of medieval patriarchalism. 179 

The conservative powers in the meantime were not entirely asleep. 
They felt subconsciously that they were fighting a losing battle against 
the collective tide. Their writers, essayists, and thinkers were frequently 
people of the highest order and their publications (today confiscated or 
nazified) were excellent. 

Yet the German Right made the same mistake as most British Con- 
servatives, i.e., they saw in nationalism (in any nationalism) a rightist 
movement. Another of their blunders was to accept militarism (and con- 
scription) as conservative and laudible institutions, forgetful of the fact 
that such a great aristocrat and conservative as Leo XIII had attacked 
these institutions violently. The Prussian Junkers (landed gentry and 
aristocracy) who had provided the Prussian army with so many able 
officers had acted against the interests of their class, a mistake of which 
some of them became aware as late as 1938 or 1939.* The Prussian army 
had only too often fought for the interests of merchants and traders, 
always eager for raw materials and customers, and the aspirations of the 
most bloodthirsty of all classes — the urban, lower middle class, the 
backbone of the negative "Modern State." The Rightists are paying now, 
all over the world, the same heavy toll for their superstitious belief in 
nationalism and militarism as the liberal Leftists were paying for their 
blind belief in Moscow. Yet the mistake of the Rightists is more tragic 
because they represent the best European tradition whereas the liberal 
Leftists usually recruited themselves from the ranks of the "brilliant" 

expected, with a good framework for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Friedrich Engels 
had written in his Biirgerkrieg in Frankreich: "Die demokratische Republik ist die 
spezifische Form fur die Diktatur des Proletariats." The "usefulness" of the "democratic 
Republic" was emphasized in practically every Parteitag of the Socialists. 

* This optic delusion was also the reason for the disastrous cooperation between 
Conservatives (Deutschnationale) under Hugenberg and the National Socialist. Many 
of the former had to pay with their lives (like Edgar Jung) for their tragic mistake. 
Again we see here the pathetic error of the upper classes in accepting the role of clercs. 
Often it is better and nobler to decline to serve the General Will and to perish. 

The most grotesque decision was probably made when the extreme right of the 
benches was allotted to the National Socialists in the Reichstag. They should have been 
seated between the Communists and the Independent Social Democrats. 



186 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

half educated. ("Brilliancy" and half education are indeed the hall marks 
of our megalopolitan civilization.) 

Germany of the postwar era, though marching toward a definite doom, 
was somehow in limbo. It was neither fish nor flesh. 180 Yet suspense and 
compromise are things which Germany will never be able to bear. We 
have already hinted at the fact that negative western ideas have in 
Central Europe the same mortal effect as measles on the American Indians. 
The two great western revolutions — the French and the Industrial 
Revolution — demanded ultimate, logical conclusions and a deepening 
process which only Germany was able to supply. 

There is a great kernel of truth in what Peter Viereck says about the 
German reaction toward alien ideals: "The perennial German rebel 
against 'French ideas' unconsciously retains many of their essentials. 
When he fancies he is fighting them most fiercely, he often only readjusts 
them to German needs. The most unbeatable German reply to a western 
revolution has always been not conservatism but an even more radical 
German revolution." {"Metapolitics." New York, 1941, p. 56.) 

One cannot close the chapter on the Second Reich without mentioning 
the German Jew. The world over, Hebrews have been portrayed by their 
enemies as monsters of diabolical shrewdness and perspicacity, and all 
through history they showed themselves to be experienced schemers and 
organizers of small plans and to have a great ability in the achievement 
of immediate ends. Yet they have always upset their many little gains by 
gigantic blunders. The farseeing Jew is almost as rare as the happy Jew. 
The greatest opportunity ever given to any nation by God they let go by. 
In propria venit et sui eum non receperunt, "He came unto His own and 
His own received Him not," laments St. John the Evangelist. 

The Jews practically always backed the wrong horse. The Jews of 
Russia who worked for the destruction of monarchy found themselves 
finally in the grips of a brutal religious persecution which hit them harder 
than the Christians* Their most brilliant exponents among the Com- 
munists were exiled, slaughtered, or assassinated in exile. The fate of 
Trotzki is symbolic for Russian Jewry. The Jews, with their ardent 
sympathies for the Soviet Union, had the same grim awakening when 
they learned of the Stalin Hitler pacts as the Spanish Jews who had 



* Orthodox Jews have an endless number of religious laws which renders their par- 
ticipation in modern, industrial life impossible without committing grave sins. Jews 
are forced in the USSR to eat nonkosher food in the factory canteens, to work on 
Saturdays, to touch money on Saturdays, etc. 



THE GERMAN SCENE 187 

backed the Moors instead of the Christians. Every great Jewish enterprise 
ended in tragedy, and they made a mistake of unparalleled magnitude 
when in their idealism they favored "democracy" in Central Europe after 
the breakdown of the Central Powers. 

The strongly Christian background of European monarchy had ad- 
mittedly some anti-Jewish associations of a religious, but never of a racial 
order.* Yet the social, not to mention the political position of the Jews 
in Central Europe, was far superior to that of the Jews in present-day 
America. No hotel in pre-Hitlerian days would have dared to display a 
sign "For Gentiles Only."** The discrimination against baptized Jews 
was negligible. Neither did Count Witte's Jewish wife ruin his career in 
Russia, nor did Anton Rubinstein's Jewish race prevent his being pub- 
licly embraced by the enthusiastic Emperor Nicholas I, nor yet did 
Prince-Archbishop Cohn's Jewish descent prevent him from getting the 
See of Olmiitz, or Baron Samuel Hazai's ancestry render his position as 
General and Hungarian Minister of War untenable. Yet the (rapidly van- 
ishing) remnants of discrimination against the Jews prompted them never- 
theless to hope for more advantages from an ochlocratic order ; thus they 
supported the "democratic" and socialist parties almost unanimously*** 
and were also the first to extend a peaceful hand to the Allies. Both these 
actions sealed their fate in the Germanies. Their tragic mistakes consisted 
largely in their ignoring the fact that they were a tiny minority — 0.9 
per cent of the population of the Second Reich. Since ochlocracy is basi- 
cally a rule of the majority it means automatically the ruin of minorities 
unless a strong liberal tradition prevails. (We have mentioned this before 
as the reason why the minority problem became so acute in Central 
Europe after the "democratization" of that area.) 181 With William II the 
German Jews lost the last guarantee of their personal rights. A hierarchic 
form of government is, so far as minorities are concerned, always prefer- 
able to an identitarian state. Farseeing people are fully aware of that. 



* One should really speak in that connection of Anti-Judaism rather than of Anti- 
semitism. Anti-Judaism was religious and not racial. Its roots may be found in Rome, 
Vienna, and Paris. Antisemitism which is "racial" emanates from Berlin, Nuremberg, 
and New York. As a biological tendency it is far more fatal and final. Like every other 
materialistic view its logical conclusion is extermination and not conversion. 

** Franz Neuman affirms rightly in his Behemoth (New York, 1942, p. 121) that the 
Germans are the least antisemitic of all people. Martin Gumperts (Holle im Paradies, 
Stockholm, 1939, p. 38) shares his views. All this in spite of Luthers viciously anti- 
semitic pamphlets. 

*** A non-Jew like Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi prophesied , that they would 
be the future aristocracy of Pan-Europe but intelligent Jews like Uriel Birnbaum saw 
clearly the coming catastrophe. 



188 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

Five years ago, during the Nordic Socialist Congress in Copenhagen, the 
Finnish delegate deplored the fact that Finland was not a monarchy, 
considering this type of state as the best guarantee for a stable constitu- 
tion as well as for the well-being of political minorities. The German Jews 
depended thus, after 1919, entirely upon the good will of millions of 
"individuals" with opinions almost exclusively molded by press and 
propaganda, instead, as hitherto, upon a gentleman who had sworn al- 
legiance to a constitution. Once an anti-Jewish party with its satellites 
gained SI per cent of all votes their disaster was inevitable. And this is 
exactly what happened. 182 

The Berliner Asphaltkultur, promoted by many Jews, could never have 
had a far-flung, popular appeal. Intellectualistic trends and ideologies 
without the simplicities and platitudes of an idie claire have few pros- 
pects in an ochlocracy which stands for the rule of the nonintellectual 
multitudes. The little bourgeoisie as well as the peasants disliked this new 
megalopolitan culture for different reasons. The hatred of the small bour- 
geoisie was even more intense because this layer had repeatedly to come 
into intimate contact with the culture of the Neue Sachlichkeit* They 
aimed at a herdism of a more suburban type. 

When Marlene Dietrich sang her famous song, "Alone in a big city," 
expressing the whole despair and loneliness of the godless straphanger, it 
was apparent that the old, d&racine" Leftism of the Lonely Intellectuals 
had come to an end. The shadows of the Red Flag with Hammer and 
Sickle, which had menaced Berlin for such a long time, disappeared, and 
in its place rose the Red Flag with the Crooked Cross. 



* The Neue Sachlichkeit (New Matter of Factness) was the self-arrogated name of 
the Modern German Republic Culture. It postulated that modern man live a life of 
simplicity. He should act according to the principles of usefulness. His existence should 
be carefully planned, but be neither ornamental nor romantic. Everything done should 
serve a definite material purpose. Neither emotions nor the supernatural should guide 
the "individual" who is definitely a mere fragment of the masses. 

The Neue Sachlichkeit as well as national socialism have Jeremiah Bentham as a 
common ancestor. Yet while the Neue Sachlichkeit fought every sentimentality in the 
name of utilitarianism we see national socialism putting sentimental values into the 
service of utilitarian actions as a means to an end. 



II 

NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND THE 
THIRD REICH 



"/ demand races of orbic bards, with unconditional and uncom- 
promising sway. Come jorth, sweet democratic despots of the 
West! — Walt Whitman, Democratic Vistas, London, 1888, p. 59. 
"Fascism is anything but a conservative form." 
— W. H. Chamberlin, Confessions of an Individualist. 

To make generalizations about the Germanies is as hopeless as to make 
generalizations about a subcontinent like India. What holds the Ger- 
manies together are not common denominators (of which there are few) 
but a persistent sentiment of "belonging together." In spite of a few com- 
mon characteristics there is nevertheless a feeling of common tasks, of 
common duties, of common memories, and the will to form a characteri- 
ological mosaic in the heart of Europe. The German lives strongly in the 
categories of tasks and duties (Aufgaben und Pflichten) ; in these cate- 
gories "different" Germans can cooperate. If Germans would try to form 
a "nation" in the western sense and to become eidetically similar or 
identical (and National Socialism apes the West with fanatical fervor in 
this respect as well as in others), the end of Germandom, as we have 
known it, would be imminent.* This danger must not be underestimated. 
Still there are not a few "generalizes" at large, and every month we 
see, either in Britain or in the United States, a book published which 
deals with the "German Jekyll and Hyde," the "Roots of Nazism," the 



* This is exactly the bone of contention with a Franco-American friend of mine who 
cannot help to deplore the fact that the Germans do not form an "ordinary nation" in 
the western sense. France of the Bourbons, Bonapartes as well as the Third Republic 
have done everything to "nationalize" the Germans. But collectivized Germany of 1940 
is hardly a more amiable neighbor than the Holy Roman Empire of 1525. 

189 



190 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

"German Question," or other hopeless attempts to solve the painful 
riddle. The mistakes in the appraisal of the German character stem from 
two main sources. 

Our authors forget, first of all, that Germandom on account of its geo- 
graphical position participates in practically all European intellectual 
currents. If they try to find the roots of the Nazi enigma they forget to 
look outside the borders of the Reich. They concentrate on persons like 
General Haushofer, who is the last bogeyman of American journalism 
because he developed a new science whose principles were bitterly disre- 
garded by National Socialists. But the principles of Geopolitik, shrouded 
in the mystery of scientific German, which is more difficult than Chinese, 
created the impression that this aged savant is another professor Mor- 
iarty in wickedness. Instead of denouncing geopolitics it would have been 
wiser to focus the attention on the deeper, moral issues. All these miserable 
professors at the Sorbonne, in Leyden, in Brussels, in the London School 
of Economics; all these essayists, pamphleteers, stump orators, editors, 
and politicians who believed in morals without religion, who wrote in 
behalf of a humanitarian, anthropocentric philosophy of life, who lec- 
tured on progress for progress's sake, who fulminated against medieval- 
ism, broadcasted against the concept of free will, who eulogized and 
worshiped machinery, praised utilitarianism, ridiculed reverence and 
piety . . . they all are guilty, guilty, guilty . . . actively, passively, 
directly, indirectly . . . guilty as Hitler, as Gobbels, as Rosenberg, as 
Goring, and their docile followers. What are these new masters of Ger- 
many doing else than copying Emile Combes, Jeremiah Bentham, John 
Dewey, Robespierre, the "Imperial Wizzard"; what are they doing else 
than believing in the tenets of utilitarianism, environmentalism, bio- 
logism, the "survival of the fittest," and the whole catechism of unre- 
strained modernity. Our "progressivists" are trying out the old trick of 
denouncing their murderous epigones as "survivals" of a past age, but the 
trick is beginning to outlive its usefulness. 

The second mistake the critics of National Socialism commit in their 
analysis is to take a certain sector of Germandom under the microscope 
{or only certain stratifications). Our learned analysts usually have a 
fairly wide knowledge about Kant, Hegel, Marx, Wagner, Treitschke, 
and a few other thinkers and writers who undoubtedly had their influence 
and importance. But how many of the analytic investigators have taken 
pains to make an honest and objective evaluation of the Junker mind? 
How many of them are aware of the fact that 45 per cent of Germandom 



NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND THE THIRD REICH 191 

is Catholic?* How many of them have ever made an attempt to study 
Catholic Germany, to investigate the influence of the monasteries, to 
study the Catholic periodicals? What, after all is known to them, about 
Austria's share in German culture? The influence of Bohemia and the 
Habsburgs, the German bishops, the East Prussian Catholics? Conserva- 
tive Germany is almost totally unknown to them ; all they do is hash and 
rehash their repertoire of Bismarck, Fichte, Treitschke, and Nietzsche 
(never, never understanding the latter). To "explain" National Socialism 
with the help of Nietzsche's philosophy is as futile as to interpret French 
Canadian culture by means of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass." How 
many of these benighted friends or enemies of the Germanies have ever 
read Przywara's analysis of the German mind . . . when it would take 
at least ten years residence in the country to understand (or rather, in- 
tuitively, to guess) the meaning of Przywara's language? And then there 
is still the broad question of the relationship between thinkers and cul- 
ture, writers and masses in co-ordination with the German Scene. Do 
German philosophies explain the German mind? Does Hobbes, for in- 
stance, explain the Anglo-Saxon mind ? All these are questions which can- 
not be easily answered. 

We have already stressed the point that Parliamentarism in the class- 
ical sense never had a chance to survive in Germany. It is a working 
proposition in only such countries as have already achieved a great uni- 
formity of thought. 

This uniformity of thought has not even now been achieved in Ger- 
many. The brutal terror of the present rulers of the Third Reich is a 
clear indication that they have to cope with the same, age-old German 
personalism which, if coupled with a little more Zivilcourage,** courage 
of civilians in daily life — would be a very dynamic power. 



* Catholicism (and its culture) is in a way a closed world. It is almost impossible for 
the outsider to appreciate and understate its values in the right proportion and relation. 
Adults have a certain ability (in varying degrees) to understand children; children can 
never understand old people. Neither can the fragment understand the total. Continentals 
can understand Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Saxons very seldom Continentals; Catholics may 
understand Protestants, but Protestants in order to understand Catholics (as Catholics) 
have to cope with an obstacle of 1500 years. This is the reason why Anglo-Saxons have 
sometimes made quite successful interpretations of Protestant Northern Germany, but 
one could hardly ever expect a good Protestant monograph on a Catholic subject or 
person, not even on a Catholic renegade like Hitler. The Catholic world has seven seals 
of which not even one can be easily broken. 

** It was curiously enough Bismarck who was the first to point out the great lack of 
Zivilcourage among the Germans. 



192 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

It would be an interesting experiment to quiz all inmates of a large 
hotel in New York and of another such hotel in "identitarian" Berlin, 
and then to compare the political opinions of the guests as well as of the 
employees. There is little doubt that everybody living in the Waldorf- 
Astoria would declare himself for the Republican form of state and 
(often without being able to define it) for "democracy" in government and 
society. Even the Communists would agree in so far as they consider 
communism to be nothing else but "streamlined democracy" (or "Twen- 
tieth-century Americanism"). In a large hotel in Berlin we would find 
persons who believe in National Socialism and others who don't, which 
fact they will confess only on condition that full secrecy is assured 
them. Some would be Communists, others religious Socialists, others 
again Catholic "Democrats" or Catholic Monarchists. Some of the latter 
would see a restoration of the Hohenzollerns and the revival of parlia 
mentarian liberalism, others again would like to go back to the Habs 
burgs and the First Reich. One would find adherents to the Weimar 
Republic, Social Democrats, Independent Socialists, Protestant Liberals 
of the Bismarckian type, Black Front Supporters, Stalinists, Anarchists 
and Trotzkyites. 

One must not forget that there were about fourteen different parties in 
the Reichstag before Hitler, representing about four major and ten 
minor philosophies. On the other hand, one can invite an American 
Democrat to dine with a Republican, an English Laborite with a Con- 
servative or a Liberal, and be quite sure that they will all agree on the 
essentials. 

A Parliamentum is an arena for the airing of opinions which should not 
only show the numerical strength of group opinions, but also provide a 
platform for constructive discussion, persuasion, and compromise. The 
element of compromise is particularly necessary in parliaments which 
suffer from a great plurality of parties and where coalition governments 
are the rule. It is therefore of the utmost necessity for an ideal parlia- 
ment that certain social conventions be kept up, that intellectual stand- 
ards are alike and — -and this is the most important requirement — that 
the members oj the house speak a basically identical "language." No 
fruitful discussion is possible if those engaged in a debate are miles apart, 
if they adopt a different terminology, if they thoroughly disagree on 
fundamentals. Controversies between people of extremely opposing views 
are, contrary to general belief, ordinarily neither interesting nor helpful. 
The British Parliament 183 as well as the American Congress meet these 



NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND THE THIRD REICH 193 

requirements, but Continental countries, so superintellectualized by their 
highly selective school system, were always characterized by a great 
measure of ideologism in the political sphere. Their parties, like their 
books, films, etc., are ordinarily based on a particular philosophy or 
Weltanschauung. This shows that the Industrial Revolution with its 
frantic herdism was in these parts of the Old World hitherto relatively 
ineffective and that the total uniformity of thought was, in spite of 
Prussian leadership, not yet achieved. The National Socialists still have 
in that respect a great task before them. 

The German Reichstag of 1931 was deadly hampered by the problem 
of the "common language." Catholic Centrists* wanted to create condi- 
tions in Germany which would make it easier for the individuals to save 
their souls; Socialists denied the existence of souls and divided people 
into classes; the German Nationalists were interested in language and 
culture ; while the National Socialists put the main stress on race. Where- 
as some looked at pocketbooks, others at the pigmentation of the skin or 
the index of the skull, fruitful discussions became impossible. When the 
speaker of one party indulged in his oratory, the others walked out. It 
was not worth while to listen to somebody's opinion when you knew that 
his premises were all wrong. The grim determination to silence the un- 
convincible enemy by execution or imprisonment already existed prior to 
1933 in many parties. Even the "Liberals" advocated the jailing of 
National-Socialist leaders. 185 

Another potent reason for the breakdown of German political ochloc- 
racy is to be found in the hatred of the German bureaucracy for the 
control of a Parliament, which was after all a control by laymen. Bu- 
reaucracy, which consists, or at least should consist exclusively of experts, 
nourishes a natural contempt for the amateur, a contempt which may 
turn into violent loathing if the amateur is given controlling power 
over the expert. We must furthermore keep in mind that only countries 
with great per capita riches can afford a government by laymen and give 
them a chance and leisure to experiment. Yet unsuccessful experiments in 
poor countries can easily turn into national disasters. The German bu- 



* The Catholic Centrists made a mistake similar to that committed by the Jews. They 
favored republicanism and political ochlocracy in Germany because they (justly) dis- 
liked the Hohenzollerns. Yet they forgot the fact that the Catholics of Germany were 
a minority in the Second Reich and that they could easily be crushed by an over- 
whelming victory of a party which rallies the majority of the country with an anti- 
Catholic (or anti-Christian) battle cry. The more intelligent Centrists like Briining had 
more "perspective" and finally worked for the return of the monarchy. 



194 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

reaucracy with its very Germanic contempt for the lay masses, was only 
waiting for the end of popular representation. This liquidation of an ob- 
solete system could only be achieved by a return to monarchy, military 
dictatorship, or by a sweeping victory of a single party which would not 
be forced to compromise with other parties in a coalition government. 
Such a party could even destroy or amend the constitution and give a free 
hand to the Civil Service, which in turn would be able to increase the 
popularity of the party by running the country efficiently on utilitarian 
principles* 

Yet the monarchical sentiments were already too weakened and the 
efforts of General Schleicher to establish a military dictatorship sup- 
ported by Civil Service and the trade-unions failed. The wishful dream 
of the bureaucracy was fulfilled in the least desirable way. By outlawing 
the Communist Party, the National Socialists gained SI per cent of all 
votes, and the Third Reich was established to the great detriment of the 
Germanies and Europe. 

Something similar happened in Russia and Italy where a bureaucracy 
works under the supervision of a party. In Russia it was obvious that the 
party would have the upper hand. In Italy and Germany the bureaucratic 
groups were bitterly disillusioned; they received a free hand in many 
domains but cultural affairs remained a prerogative of the party officials. 
And the cultural domain is the most important one in the eyes of 
Continentals. 

All these three states — the Reich, the USSR, and Italy — are not dic- 
tatorships in the classic sense. They are one-party states and their dicta- 
tors have as party bosses a "parliamentarian" past. Hitler, Stalin, and 
Mussolini have (unlike Dionysos of Syracuse or Polycrates of Samos) a 
whole party machinery behind them, not just a police force. If one re- 
members that the word party comes from the Latin word pars (part), 
and that the NSDAP, the VKP(b) and the PNF** pretend to represent 



* In the good old days, before he signed the grandiloquent demo-nazi manifesto, the 
City of Man, Herr Thomas Mann had a less beclouded vision. In his well-known book 
Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, written under the impact of the First World War 
(Berlin, 1922, pp. 285-287), he not only recognizes the burning antithesis between lay 
and expert rule, but he senses also the ochlocratic danger of popular envy and the even 
greater danger of "democratic" (and postdemocratic) totalitarianism in the form of the 
"politicized" nation. 

** NSDAP — Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; VKP(b) — Vsyesoyuzni 
Kommunisticeski Part (bol'seviki) All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks) ; PNF — 
Partito Nazionale Fascista. Yet the Vaterliindische Front (Patriotic Front) of Austria, 
and the "Portuguese Legion" (Legiao Portugueza) are not former parties. 



NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND THE THIRD REICH 195 

the whole nation, the paradoxical and evil aspects of the situation become 
apparent. 

The Great Error of the Century (i.e., to consider nationalism, a Rightist 
idea) was largely due to the resentment against the destructive idea of 
Internationalism, prone to trample down every tradition, everything or- 
ganically grown, eager to transform the world into a dull, uniform place 
without romantic variations, where everybody between Hammerfest and 
Capetown would wear long pants, inflammable celluloid collars and speak 
Esperanto. 

Yet the National Socialists themselves established a "German Inter- 
nationalism" by brutally persecuting all federal and centrifugal forces, 
by prohibiting the use of the provincial and city flags, by ridiculing local 
patriotism and branding everybody who dared to criticize centralization as 
a "separatist traitor." Gleichschaltung ■ — assimilating unification — is the 
sacred slogan of the National Socialists who already in their very name 
display two identitarian ideas. It must be borne in mind that nationalism 
and internationalism are (like capitalism and socialism — see p. 134), 
not antagonistic ideas but just one and the same idea, different 
only in the employment of means. The Internationalist wants identity 
over the whole world and to crush all "local" differences. The Nationalist 
similarly is out to eradicate all "local" (tribal, provincial) differences. 
But the ultimate issue is not between the monolithic nation of the 
Nationalists and the monolithic world of the Internationalist, because the 
true Nationalist who is always an expansionist wants to dominate the 
whole world and his herdist ideal is a world exclusively populated by his 
own race (after the extermination of all "inferior" races). The uniform 
world of the Internationalist, populated by a standardized race of mon- 
grels, is only paralleled by the uniform world of the Nationalist pop- 
ulated by a standard race which has assimilated or exterminated all other 
linguistic or racial units. 

There is another issue which needs elucidating : the National Socialist 
slogan of Blut und Boden (blood and soil). Soil is something personal; 
where I dwell and live nobody else can dwell ; this is also the gist of the 
physical law that two bodies cannot be in the same place at the same 
time. But "blood" (nation, race) is something we possess with other 
people in common* Soil has a personalist (romantic) value, blood has 



* God is unique. Souls are unique. Rare things are precious. Hence the twofold mean- 
ing of the word common. 



196 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

predominantly herdist aspects. In theory it is easy to reconcile these two 
ideals because they belong to two different categories (like "black" and 
"tall"), but in political practice they may frequently clash. The blood- 
and-soil dogma was therefore never sincerely accepted by the National 
Socialists ; they were far too urban to look with reverence at the diversity 
of the soil, and the Boden part of their slogan was discarded as soon as 
they entered into world politics. After their sensible start with the re- 
form of the laws of agrarian inheritance they immediately betrayed the 
South Tyrolean peasantry and the Baltic gentry and inaugurated a period 
of migratory Jewish Ahasverism such as was never witnessed before in 
Modern European History. Only a completely diracini urbanite can 
rejoice in the idea of seeing people who dwelt for 500 years on the same 
spot being shipped, against their will, to some remote part of the Con- 
tinent where they have to live as squatters in a world with which they 
have nothing in common. Baltic noblemen who were put into Polish 
castles with another family's crest over the gate felt worse than thieves. 

Blut und Boden embraces the same inner antagonism as "liberty and 
equality" or "patriotism and nationalism." It is obvious that blood and 
nationalism on one hand and soil and patriotism on the other go well 
together. After some reflection we will come to the conclusion that blood- 
nationalism matches with equality, while soil patriotism matches with 
liberty. The soil makes free men (the peasant and the landed nobleman 
are free), but blood is an equalizing and generalizing factor. "The Ger- 
mans," "the Jews," "the Negroes," each names a species, but a plot of 
land is personal (property). The monarchical idea can only be reintro- 
duced in connection with soil and patriotism, never with blood and 
equality which reeks of the French Revolution, of Robespierre, Hitler, 
Judge Lynch, and the slaughter of the modern mass wars. This whole 
question is of the utmost importance — not only to Germany but to the 
world at large. It is a burning problem in the United States where the 
love for the soil is almost absent among the large urban masses and the 
label "patriotism" actually denotes nationalism. This very war is one 
between liberty and soil on one side, as against equality (identity) and 
blood on the other. If equality and blood win over freedom and land, 
monotony instead of creative diversity will dominate the world and make 
life intolerable. 

The Austrians of Dollfuss and Schuschnigg, incorporated in the Vater- 
landische Front (Patriotic Front), stood for the idea of Fatherland-Home 
(Vaterland-Heimat) as against the National Socialist Folk-Nation (Volk- 



NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND THE THIRD REICH 197 

N ation-Rasse) . For the supercilious foreign observers it was just one 
form of "fascism" against another one. They always hoped for an unholy 
alliance between the "clericals" and the international Socialists against 
the National Socialists. Yet the events of February, 1934, showed clearly 
that the international Socialists never hesitated to help their national 
colleagues by attacking the "clericals" in the most critical moment of 
self-defense. 

Before continuing the analysis of National Socialism it will be neces- 
sary to concentrate upon the person of its originator and leader. 

Hitler was born and brought up in prewar Austria. His father belonged 
to the lowest layer of the bourgeoisie. He himself spent his childhood in 
the smaller towns of the Upper-Austrian plain, one of the very few flat 
parts of Austria. He never climbed mountains nor did he ever live a 
truly rural life. He is a purely "urban" type. 

As a young man he came to Vienna, at that time a very cosmopolitan 
and aristocratic city with the best Catholic and European tradition 
around a German nucleus. This city was the synthesis of East and West. 
Built on the last extremities of the Hungarian plain, its western suburbs 
nevertheless touch the foot of the Alps. The inner city with its cathedral 
and the imperial palace — the Burg — is full of memories from the First 
Reich. In the Burg were, until recently, the crown and insignias of the 
Holy Roman Empire. But the boroughs outside the former walls showed 
eastern monotony ; here many Jews, Czechs, Croats, Poles, Magyars, and 
Italians had their quarters. The castle of Schonbrunn reminds one some- 
how of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, for although built in the 
eighteenth century in imitation of Versailles, it is massive, robust, and 
has definitely something Eastern about it in its heaviness. The Burg 
was built at a time when the Habsburgs still remembered their having 
been at one time counts in Switzerland, whereas Schonbrunn distinctly 
belonged to a monarch who ruled over the melancholy plains of Hungary 
and Galicia. 

Hitler was at least indifferent toward Catholicism; Europe meant for 
him nothing, he disliked the Habsburgs, hated the Austrian Idea, and 
loathed Vienna. He never understood the complex soul of the multicolored 
city. Like all men of a limited knowledge he had a violent, inborn hatred 
for things or ideas which surpassed his comprehension. He had the same 
dislike for Austria as all great "Liberals" of his time, and he viewed 
the dual monarchy in the same negative terms as Gladstone, Wickham 



198 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

Steed, Seton-Watson, and Mazzini, whose great objects of admiration 
were "enlightened" countries (like Prussia or Rumania). Hitler was 
shocked by the lack of homogeneity in his fatherland and its capital, 
and the universal character of the Habsburgs seemed to him a betrayal 
of the German essence of Austria. These "unpatriotic" monarchs and 
princes who spoke German, French, Hungarian, and Czech with equal 
ease, these descendants of the Holy Roman Emperors who regularly 
married foreigners, could not meet the approval of a young man thor- 
oughly imbued (without knowing it) by the ideas of the French Revolu- 
tion. The presence of Jews exasperated his sense of uniformity even 
more; how could he bear the thought that a part of the Viennese pop- 
ulation belonged to another race. Their black, shabby coats, their papers 
printed in Hebrew letters, their strange accent and even stranger features 
outraged the desire for symmetry and identity of the young, hungry 
"artist." 

Prior to the outbreak of World War I Hitler gave up his domicile 
in Vienna and took quarters in Munich. This at least was a city after 
his own heart. Munich was the residence of the rulers of Bavaria who 
had been made kings by Napoleon's grace. This country, though largely 
Catholic, had often accepted material and financial help from the French 
who played them up against the Emperor. Yet it must be admitted in all 
fairness that this treacherous attitude of the court of Munich was a 
less frequent and less dangerous enterprise than the dubious activities 
of the Prussians. 

Munich itself had been largely rebuilt by King Louis I, a romanticist 
of the mildly anticlerical, nationalistic trend.* Maximilian and Louis II 
had added much to his work. The latter, famous for his support given 
to Richard Wagner, became the victim of insanity and his architectural 
extravaganzas are known the world over. Vienna, in spite of its obvious 
darker aspects and its frivolity, was and is at least a great city of im- 
mense human value and endowed with a great dramatic and tragic 
past.** Munich, on the other hand, looks like the petrified scenery of 
some musical comedy by Offenbach. It is crammed with buildings in 
an imitation Greek style and full of the memory of beautiful Lola Montez, 
of Fafner and the steaming stage dragon, of Lohengrin and Brunhilde 
in shining armor. Munich represents the pseudo-dramatic dreamworld 



* See the excellent biography Ludwig I, by Caesar Conte Corti. 

** There are the revolutions of 1848 and the rebellions in 1919, 1927, 1934 (February 
and July), the attempted assassination of Seipel, the assassination of Dollfuss, the mur- 
ders of 1938, the assassination of Count Stiirgkh. 



NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND THE THIRD REICH 199 

of the German bourgeois. Here he finds houses and palaces built in the 
frightful style of the Hofbrduhaus, a morbidly sentimental interpreta- 
tion of "medieval" architecture. Munich is also an inevitable starting 
point for all excursions into the Bavarian Alps, never missed by chartered 
accountants from Berlin parading their leather shorts. It is a mixture 
of Atlantic City, Denver, Greenwich Village, and Beverly Hills, in which 
Piloty and kindred spirits painted scenes from Alpine peasant life re- 
calling cheap prints or advertisements for different brands of cheese. 186 

Yet Munich had homogeneity and this was the thing the young starving 
painter was asking for. There were no Slavs, Magyars, or Eastern Jews 
in the Bavarian capital, and no historical break in the exterior picture 
of this city. Hitler was happy. He immediately felt the Prussian in- 
fluence which made for greater efficiency and cleanliness. Electrification 
had made more progress and there seemed to be a greater number of hos- 
pitals, bathrooms, and trained nurses than in Vienna. Trains ran on 
schedule and more motorcars could be seen in the streets. Hitler ad- 
mired Munich very much in the same way as a semieducated Iraqi 
official might admire London, or a hillbilly might marvel at New York. 
The mutual hostility of culture and civilization was unknown to him 
and one must add that he never succeeded in understanding either of 
these phenomena properly. Yet he was so deeply impressed by this new, 
more progressive and efficient Western World, that he gave himself up 
to it with love and enthusiasm. 187 When war came he enlisted in the 
Bavarian (German) Army, instead of the Austrian one. He had found his 
home. Ubi bene, ibi patria. He knew instinctively that here he had a 
chance to succeed. Southerners, on account of their superior oratorical 
faculties, are seldom failures in the North. And Hitler, the Austrian, a 
"clerc" through and through, served the Prussianized German Reich 
with all the fervor of his immature youth. 

Still it must be borne in mind that the virus of National Socialism as a 
definite political organization came from outside the Second Reich. A 
Weltanschauung which combines the national with the social as well as 
with a "religious" outlook only existed in a concrete form in the Taborite 
wing of Hussitism. This Taborite tradition had always survived in the 
soul of the Czech people and it was no wonder when a group of Czech 
Socialists seceded in the last decade of the nineteenth century from the 
// Internationale because they were unable to share the antinationalistic 
outlook of that world-wide organization. The group in question called 
themselves Czech National Socialist Party, and survived until the break- 



200 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

down of Czechoslovakia. Doctor Edward Benes is one of its most 
important exponents. The character of this party is described by Karel 
Hoch in the following words: 

Collectivizing by means of development; surmounting class struggle by 
national discipline; moral rebirth and democracy as the conditions of social- 
ism; powerful, popular army, etc.* 

The Germans of Bohemia and Moravia (the so-called "Sudeten Ger- 
mans") started early in the twentieth century a countermovement which 
was first called Deutsche Arbeitcrpartei (German Workers Party). It 
was founded largely by Czech renegades who transplanted the Hussite 
ideas of anticlericalism, anti-Habsburgism, and "racial" mass sentiment 
into the Germans of the northwestern borderlands of the Austrian mon- 
archy. Among these were men like Aloysius Cihula, Ferdinand Burschof- 
sky, Proch, Kroy, and Dr. Walter Riehl (who became later leader of 
the Austrian National Socialists after the Armistice). 

The Moravian local groups demanded repeatedly the adoption of the 
name "German National Socialist Workers Party," but the Bohemian 
groups resisted because such a frank adaptation of the name of their 
Czech "opposite number" seemed too much of a recognition of their 
lack of originality.** The political tendency of the Deutsche Arbeiter- 
partei was naturally "liberal" and "democratic." On their meeting in 
Trautenau (August IS, 1905) they declared solemnly that they were: 

... a liberal, nationalistic party which fights with all powers at its disposal 
against all reactionary movements, against all feudal, clerical, and capitalistic 
privileges, as well as against all influences with an alien racial background.*** 

The efforts of the Moravian groups nevertheless bore fruit. The last 
great congress of the Arbeiterpartei before the disintegration of the 
Austro-Hungarian monarchy was held on the fifth of May, 1918, in 
Vienna and thus for the first time outside of Bohemia and Moravia. 
Then the name Deutsche Nationalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei was finally 
adopted and the new formulation of the program showed further steps 
in the direction which Hitler later on eagerly pursued. It was then decreed 
that: 



* See tabulation at the end of his The Political Parties in Czechoslovakia. Cechoslovak 
Sources and Documents, No. 9. Orbis, Praha, 1936. 

** It is interesting to note that Robert Hohlbaum, a leading National Socialist, in his 
poetic collection Deutschland, addressed a hymn to Hus whom he considers to be German 
"in spirit." 

*** A. Ciller, Vorldufer des Nationalsozialismus, Ertl-Verlag, Wien, 1932, p. 135. 



NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND THE THIRD REICH 201 

... the German National Socialist Workers Party is not a party exclusively 
for laborers; it stands for the interests of every decent and honest enterprise. 
It is a liberal and strictly racial (volkische) Party fighting against all re- 
actionary efforts, the clerical, feudal, and capitalistic privileges, but before 
all against the increasing influence of the Jewish commercial mentality which 
encroaches on public life. . . . 

. . . The Party demands the introduction of plebiscites for all important laws. 
. . . The Party demands the abolition of the rule of Jewish banks over our 
economical life and the establishment of People's Banks under democratic 
control.* 

We see here the cant of continental "democracy," the racialistic appeal, 
the plebiscitarian tendencies. 

The party was naturally rather small in the beginning but it was 
nevertheless able to score 42,000 votes in the first elections of Czecho- 
slovakia in June, 1919. There was a certain stagnation in the movement 
which watched the rise of its younger sister organization in Germany 
with keen interest and enthusiasm. After Hitler's release from his in- 
ternment, in December, 1924, the National Socialists of the Czechoslovak 
Republic accepted the leadership of the numerically superior group in 
the German Reich. The masters had submitted to their pupils.** 

The power and secret of the Third Reich lies exactly in the fact that 
it was never anything else but an exaggeration of the Second Reich. 
National Socialism hardly brought any new ideas to the Germanies. 
There are certain traits in the German character which might be called 
"eastern,"*** but National Socialism itself is not in the least eastern. It is 



* Ibid., pp. 141-142. 

** See also Hans Knirsch: Aus der Cesckichte der deutscken nationalsozialistischen 
Arbeiterbewegung Alt-Osterreichs und der Tschechoslowakei," Aussig, 1931, and H. C. 
Kaesgel, Ein Sudetendeutscher ergibt sich nicht, Karlsbad, 1939, p. 145. 

It must be emphasized that an intensive study of national socialistic "prehistory" re- 
veals a curious lack of original thought in Hitler's concepts; Hitler's strength consists 
solely in the clever use of already existing trends, ideas, and situations. It lies in the 
very nature of mass leaders that they cannot be "original"; the mass leader is necessarily 
a virtuoso of commonplaces which he may or may not repeat in the guise of a "new 
discovery." The modern dictator is not out to contradict but to confirm already existing 
views (and prejudices) . This is another, subtle form of flattery of the masses. Original 
"controversial" ideas seldom get an immediate mass response. Originality implies the 
(discourteous) affirmation that opinions held recently on certain subjects are wrong. 
Mass man (i.e., the inferior man) cannot tolerate being scolded, or laughed at. 

*** Brutality and cruelty are not limited to the East. English laws at the beginning of 
the past century were far more brutal than those in Russia. (Hanging for every theft 
of 40 shillings and over.) France had in Cayenne an equivalent to the concentration 
camps of Germany and Russia. The treatment of civilians during the last war (see 
Aladar Kuncz' Black Monastery and E. E. Cummings' The Enormous Room, 1922) 
finds its parallel in the mistreatment of refugees during the present one. (See Arthur 
Koestler's Scum of the Earth, New York, 1941.) 



202 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

imposed upon a background which has eastern elements, but the very 
ideas (not the character)* of the unfortunate Austrian lowlander, who 
leads the Germanies, are essentially western. They are a logical con- 
coction of concepts of the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, 
biologism, Richard Wagner, and Amerikanismus. 

In order to look them over more clearly we shall analyze in succession 
their various aspects: 

I. The mechanical material conception of the Reich. The Reich, in- 
stead of being a spiritual entity with a world mission, becomes an intro- 
vert state which, for its existence, has no need of a metaphysical or 
supranational justification. The only and ultimate reason for its existence 
is the life of the German people. It feeds, nourishes, protects, and regu- 
lates the people. It is no less a utilitarian organization than the Imperial 
Chemical Industries, Ltd., or General Motors, Inc. The bigger the Reich, 
the better for the German people. A bigger Reich means more food, 
automobiles, railways, elastic garters, and radio sets. To achieve this 
bigger Reich a military success is necessary. The ideal Reich — the com- 
mercial industrial Lebensraum, populated by the German people as 
well as their metics (Czechs) and helots (Poles) — guarantees the highest 
living standards in the world. The perfected Third Reich is supposed 
to be some sort of paradise — rather like the Soviet Millennium** or the 
ochlocratic Brave New World where milk and honey flow. Germany must 
top Europe, Europe the world. Deutschland ilber Alles, uber Alles in der 
Welt. Germany must become the biggest, widest, cheapest, happiest coun- 
try in the world. Germany must become another "America." 

II. The Third Reich will be collectivistic. Its perfection will necessitate 
a terrific collective effort. The person does not count. This collective 
effort is not only a means but also an end. Collectivism is going to stay 
for good. "One German is as good as any other German," is a slogan 
which can be frequently heard. National Socialism — like Communism in 
the eyes oj the Stalinists ■ — is the most modern form of democracy. 
When Hitler and Mussolini attack the "western democracies" they in- 
sinuate that their "democracy" is not genuine. National Socialism en- 
visages abolishing the difference in wealth, education, intellect, taste, 



* His sticking to friends (Freunderlivirtschaft) is no less typical an Austrian char- 
acteristic than this preference of intuition to logic. He remains for North Germany the 
"magic stranger." 

** Hitler always repeats that he builds for "the next 1000 years." 



NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND THE THIRD REICH 203 

philosophy, and habits by a leveling process which necessitates in turn 
a total control over the child and the adolescent. Every personal attitude 
will be branded — • after communist pattern — as "bourgeois," and this in 
spite of the fact that the bourgeois is the representative of the most 
herdist class in the world, and that National Socialism is a basically 
bourgeois movement. 

Hitler in Mein Kampf repeatedly speaks of the "masses" and the 
"herd" referring to the people. The German people should probably, in 
his view, remain a mass of identical "individuals" in an enormous sand 
heap or ant heap, identical even to the color of their shirts, the garment 
nearest to the body. 

III. To achieve even greater identity the tentative effort has been 
made to identify nation — i.e., the linguistic-cultural nation — with bio- 
logical race. The Nordic race (less represented among Germans than 
among Poles if the anthropological measurements and statistics are cor- 
rect) was singled out to be synonymous with Germandom.* 

The emphasis on race was so strong, because it is the only factor that 
cannot be altered by mere education, coercion, persuasion, or propa- 
ganda. A Catholic might become a Protestant, a painter turn into a 
dictator, a New Dealer into a Republican, but a Negro cannot become 
a "Caucasian," a Semite, or a Mongol. There always was at least a 
certain similarity between the races and racial mixtures within the 
borders of the Reich, but the Jews were and are "different." The natural, 
romantic man, regardless of whether he liked or disliked the Jews, saw 
in them the representants of an interesting and ancient race, blood 
brothers of our Lord. Yet the true herdist resented the baptized or un- 
baptized sons of Abraham violently, and for the identitarian National 
Socialist, with his latent inferiority complex and his petit bourgeois lack 
of worldly experience, they were the worst offenders against the sacred 
law of uniformity. Racial laws, prohibiting the intermarriage between 
"Aryans" and "non-Aryans" were issued in order to achieve a more uni- 
form breed. But the final solution of the "problem" is only extermination 
or emigration. 

IV. The Third Reich is fundamentally secular. The first steps toward 
a secularization and despiritualization of modern culture were made by 



* The craze which this Nordic mania caused had sometimes the most startling con- 
sequences. One saw, for instance, after the Anschluss, boys of the Hitlerjugend discoloring 
their hair with hydroxide. 



204 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

the nineteenth-century "liberals" of the etatistic brand* who started 
the downward trend by the institution of the obligatory civil marriage. 
Thus marriage became primarily a legal affair, a "free" and therefore 
dissolvable contract between two persons.** The omnipotent state, which 
"sanctified" the marital bed with revenue stamps and legal permits, did 
not stop at that point.*** The modern Leviathan goes even further and 
investigates the racial and sanitary background of those concerned and 
then nods approval or raises a prohibiting warning finger.**** 

V. The Third Reich is not only extremely race conscious but equally 
health conscious. Mein Kampf deals extensively with health problems 
and the doctor worshiping spirit of the "men in white" atmosphere thus 
finds its counterparts in the Germanies. The German "men in white" 
and "brown sisters" are reinforced by storm troopers, Gestapo, and 
the entire mighty Arm of the State. The Guillotine — adopted from the 
older Democracy — the castrating and sterilizing knife, the firing squad 
in the concentration camps are all busy creating a "New Race" full of 
health, vigor, and pep. Education weeds out the weaklings, the super- 
intellectuals, and the romantics with personal ideas. Goring's Rechte Kerle 
are nothing but the "regular guys" of America or the "ordinary decent 
chaps" of England. Needless to say that people like Beethoven with his 
ear troubles; Schiller and Novalis with pulmonary tuberculosis; Kleist 
suffering from cyclic melancholia; Heine, Schubert, Dostoyevski, 
Nietzsche, St. Augustine, St. Therese of Lisieux, St. Paul, or Milton 



* The continental "liberals" were always strongly etatistic and seldom troubled by 
the "prejudices" of civil liberties. After having secured the key position in society and 
state they used the latter to enforce their views, persecuting brutally all nonliberals and 
specially the "clericals." The liberal parties of Hungary, France, and Italy had sad 
records, yet these are widely surpassed by the atrocious horrors of Spanish and Ru- 
manian Liberals. Every ideology becomes on the Continent inevitably a dogmatic, un- 
compromising philosophy. Professor Carlton Hayes speaks in his A Generation of Ma- 
terialism (New York, 1941), about "General Liberalism" and "Sectarian Liberalism." 

** The Church always opposed civil marriage bitterly. The state created willfully, by 
the introduction of civil marriage, a distorted view about the basically sacramental char- 
acter of marriage. Often civil marriage is nothing else than a legalized love affair. 

*** Even a so-called "conservative" state like Hungary jails a priest if he presides at 
the sacrament of marriage mutually administered by the contracting parties without 
the preceding ridiculous ceremony of civil marriage, where a miserable little scribe arro- 
gantly declares a couple to be "husband and wife." The most intolerable aspect about this 
act is its intentionally solemn and ceremonial character. 

**** The State of New York, for instance, prohibits a priest to assist at the spending 
of the sacrament of marriage if it does not give to the couple a certificate of health. 
The Church was very little aware of this fantastic encroachment upon her rights because 
she was at that time too intensively occupied with the defeat of the Child Labor 
Amendment Act. 



NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND THE THIRD REICH 205 

would all have come under the knife for reasons of hereditary ailments, 
race, or "general health." 

The ideal German youth of tomorrow is the beaming boy of the soap 
advertisements, a young man, healthy, simple, stupid, "decent," neither 
good nor bad, the very subject of Odon von Horvath's Age of the Fish. 

VI. The Third Reich is Machiavellian as well as utilitarian* State 
abortion for the "unfit," sterilization for eugenic reasons, euthanasia for 
the hopelessly insane, the entire vocabulary of a progressive world which 
prefers to spend money on popular cars and howitzers rather than on 
insane asylums or hospitals for the incurable, characterize National 
Socialist practice. 

Hitler himself has a deep and almost religious respect for science and 
technical "progress." In that respect he could match most American 
professors. In one of his speeches in Nuremberg (September, 1938) he 
said very clearly: 

Der Nationals ozialismus ist keine kidtische Religion, sondern eine auf 
exakter Wissenschajt aufgebaute Volksbewegung. (National socialism is not 
a religion founded on a cult, but a popular movement based on exact 
sciences.)** 

The very spirit embodied in such magazines as, for instance, Popular 
Science is embodied in National Socialism. This is backed up by a strong 
and holy belief that we are in the maelstrom of a steadily faster moving 
scientific progress and that Germany must lead, in that noble competi- 
tion, all other states. International statistics are carefully watched in 
order to keep in step. Every German should therefore not only possess 
the identical brown shirt and the identical education but also an identi- 
cal car — the Volkswagen, an identical wireless set, the Volksempf anger, 
etc. Hitler wants a Germany more progressive than any other 
country; bigger and better factories, highways, laboratories, steamships, 
railways, public buildings, bicycles, and airplanes. And Germany really 



* The utilitarian inheritance (Jeremiah Bentham) of our culture and civilization is 
stronger than one may admit. Utilitarianism is the cancer which has destroyed most 
fundamentals. The man or woman who considers his or her marriage as "inconvenient" 
flatly breaks the solemn oath of honor and contracts a new one. We find men and women 
in modern society who have given, three or four times during their lifetime, an oath of 
"loyalty and fidelity until death do us part" and it is amusing to see the same creatures 
protesting against Hitler's serialized breaches of promises. Only a regenerated world will 
be able to cope successfully with this Great Challenger. 

** This has strongly been re-emphasized by Martin Bormann, Hess's successor. His 
much advertised speech against the Churches had all "scientific" arguments one could find 
in our Leftist Weeklies. See London Tablet, January 27, 1942. 



206 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

became more progressive and more uniform. To every unprejudiced 
Leftist the Third Reich must be a paradise ; jealousy and envy alone for 
the achievement of a competing group may dampen his or her enthusiasm 
or generate an unwarranted dislike. 

VII. The Third Reich is majoritarian like every true ochlocracy. The 
suppression of minorities is illiberal but not undemocratic (in the classical 
sense). Yet the Third Reich never pretended to be liberal, neither did 
the Soviet Union. Stalin even took pains to establish a "Finnish Demo- 
cratic People's Republic" in Terijoki during the Finnish war. Thousands 
of Russians died in order to "increase the realm" of this "little 
democracy." 

There is (as in all other ochlocracies) from time to time a checking 
up of "public opinion" in the Germanies, in the Soviet Union, and even 
in Italy. The results of these plebiscites or elections may be correct or 
faked. But the important thing is the fact that they give to the respective 
governments ample opportunity to boast in front of the people and the 
whole world that the government in these countries is supported by a 
majority. 18 * Even the Soviet Union, solemnly preaching the Marxist 
gospel of the dictatorship of the proletariat, cannot get rid of the "demo- 
cratic" idea of majority rule. We live in an age of organized hypocrisy. 
Dictators in antiquity freely called themselves "tyrants" or "despots." 
The modern usurpers crouch prudently behind the backs of the knavish, 
trembling masses, and the unassuming name of "leader" is thought to be 
more appropriate in a thorough ochlocratic age with whose traditions 
and principles nobody dares to make a final break. 189 

VIII. The Third Reich not only stands for an "inner democracy" and 
identity, but also for material equality with other nations. "The Ger- 
manies," say the National Socialists, "have to keep up with the Joneses" 
• — not referring, of course, to the individuals, but to the inhabitants of 
the Reich in relation to those of other countries. Hitler repeatedly boasted 
that the standard of living of the German working class is superior to 
that of the corresponding class in England. This probably held true 
for the two first years of his regime. Unemployment, without doubt, was 
a very grave problem in the Reich, but a mere comparison between 
British and German industrial areas gave to the impartial observer the 
impression that the German standards were definitely superior. It may 
be true that the Germans lived largely on borrowed money, but they 
lived well and the proletariat was obviously on its way to reach the 
material level of the bourgeoisie. The middle class, on the other hand, 



NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND THE THIRD REICH 207 

had no reasonable hope of ever reaching or surpassing British middle- 
class standards. A substantial part of the German peasantry was far 
better off than the English tenants. The differences were only spectacular 
in the high income brackets. But income differences in the upper classes 
merely indicate that the standards of luxuries, and not of necessities, are 
at variance. Thus, taking the German people as a whole, one can say 
(if one is permitted to generalize) that it was one of the richest in 
Europe, second only to the Scandinavians, Dutch, and, perhaps, the 
English. German standards were incomparably higher than those of 
France, Spain, Italy, Poland, Hungary, or the Balkans. Yet a mass spirit 
of collective competition, collective envy, and collective jealousy was 
whipped up. As if there were not greater values than banking accounts, 
per-capita consumption of coffee and similar capitalistic criteria! 

National Socialism started as a social ideology in the national frame- 
work and developed into a socialistic ideology of nations. Today it is 
a political philosophy demanding a very democratic identity of wealth 
between the nations, just as communism puts more stress on the uni- 
formity of the living standards of individuals. National Socialism is 
therefore in a sense even more identitarian than Communism, which 
clamors for identical ants, whereas National Socialism demands identical 
ant hills. 

IX. But even within the ant heap there is total uniformity. At the 
present moment there are still privileges and "aristocracies" in existence 
for the mere reason that uniformity has not yet been fully achieved. If 
the Jews form an underprivileged (or even outlawed) class and thus 
interrupt the uniformity, it is only because they are literally a survival 
from the old "chaotic disorder." The ideal Third Reich of tomorrow 
has only Aryans, National Socialists, members of the unified State 
Church,* and perhaps, after centuries of eugenic measures, sterilizations 
and artificial inseminations, only Nordics of the cranial index x, with a 
light-blue colored iris and fair hair. The proposal to breed Germans like 
dogs or rabbits in kennels or studs has repeatedly been made before 
and after Hitler came to power.** It would certainly be a logical step 
if the axioms of National Socialism are not going to be questioned or 
successfully challenged from within. And there is also the problem about 



* The National Socialists not only dislike the two Christian Churches in Germany 
because they try to escape state control and thwart the totalitarian effort but also be- 
cause they divide the nation into [two or three] groups. 

** Walter Darre, Minister of Agriculture, proposed such measures seriously in 1923. 



208 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

the "Revolution in Permanence." If Nazism should win the present war 
something must be done in order to keep the masses "occupied." But 
similar measures (from a more "eugenic" than racialist type) may be 
expected in the Soviet Union, or for that sake, in very health conscious, 
progressive, terroristic ochlocracies without a sound, liberal tradition.* 

X. Another typically ochlocratic trait (intrinsically connected with 
the one mentioned before) is the emphasis on size and the reverence for 
quantity. Only in a bourgeois-commercial age did countries begin to boast 
of the number of their inhabitants and the square miles of their surface. 
It became one of the characteristics of the American Republic to refer 
continually to the size of the country, yet these references were scanty 
in comparison with those of the great number worshipers, the Russian 
Communists, who loved to point out at every occasion that they control 
"one-sixth of the earth." Mayakovski's famous poem-song, 150 Millions, 
reflects the same arithmetic spirit. No well-bred Englishman, Chinese, or 
eighteenth-century Spaniard would be permanently conscious of belonging 
to empires with so and so many millions of inhabitants and square miles. 
Neither would they use these statistics in recurrent phrases. Yet just 
this quantitative consciousness has been so deeply inoculated into count- 
less Germans by the National Socialists and their forerunners. 

XI. Chesterton was the first to point out the Jewish essence of National 
Socialism. The overindustrious and indiscriminate reading of books with 
such a strong nationalistic keynote as the Talmud, has planted many 
fundamentally Jewish conceptions into the heads of the present masters 
of Germany. A distortion of the old Jewish racialism is: Recht ist 
was dem Deutschen Volke nutzt — "Whatever is of advantage to the 
German people is just and lawful."** Dr. Gobbel's order in November, 
1938, not to sell any more goods to the Jews reminds one of the Talmudian 
law not to sell anything to the Christians during the Jewish feast days. 
The Nuremberg laws have their parallels in the prescriptions of the 
Old Testament which strictly prohibited the intermarriage with non- 
Jews, regardless of their faith. Offspring resulting from the union between 
Hebrews and the Canaanites (the autochthonous population) was con- 
sidered to be illegitimate. The Samaritans, who prayed to the same God 
as the Jews, were practically outcasts and even more despised than the 
Baal worshipers because their ancestors had intermarried during the 



* See Erik and Christiane von Kuehnelt-Leddihn's novel, Moscow 1979. 
** Which, of course, is nothing but the ultimate consequence of the Manchesterian 
"enlightened self-interest" and the Sacro egoismo of pre-Fascist Italy 



NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND THE THIRD REICH 209 

Babylonian captivity with "racially impure" Chaldeans. The concep- 
tion of the Chosen People (once theologically justified) is of Jewish 
origin.* And it is equally true that the "Fall of the Germans" can only 
be compared with the tragedy of the Fall of the Jews from their exalted 
position of a "Chosen People" to their Ahasveric existence since the 
terrible night of Golgotha. Only a very great people, like the Germans 
or Russians, with an imperial past, can experience such utter degradation. 
Corruptio optimi pessima. In order to produce a Lenin or a Gobbels, a 
Cheka or a Gestapo, one must have had a great past with an Albertus 
Magnus, a Dostoyevski, a Tauler, or a Solovyev. To fall deep and to 
crush fatally one must have jumped from a tower or a mountain. 

XII. The Third Reich is furthermore the most modern state of the 
world** Nothing could be more incorrect than to speak about Germany 
putting the clock back. This mistake has arisen due to the wrong inter- 
pretation of nationalism and to the mistreatment of Jews.*** Yet the 
attitude toward Jews in the Middle Ages sprung from purely religious 
reasons. Individual conversion completely changed their status which 
was in any case better than generally assumed. They enjoyed a far- 
reaching autonomy and very few of them objected to the institution of the 
Ghetto. There was no desire of the Jews to "assimilate," and a symbiosis 
between Jews and Gentiles is impossible for the Orthodox Jew who is not 
permitted by his religion to live in a Christian (trefen) house. Jews were 
treated far better than heretics and it was definitely better to be a Jew 
in Rome than a Jesuit in Elizabethan England. 

Intelligent observers who witnessed the annexation of Austria in 1938 
were impressed by the fact of a large-scale "modernization" of that 
country. The French Revolution was suddenly let loose on that part of 
the First Reich which had so far pretty successfully withstood the on- 
slaught of the philosophy of Rousseau. Racial discrimination of American 
intensity was ordered by law, divorce was made possible, and civil mar- 



* On pages 349-350, Lewis Mumford drops, in his The Culture of Cities, New York, 
1938, the hint that the National Socialists copied their racialism from the Jews. See also 
Esdras 9:10, and Nehemias 13:23-30. 

** The word modern is today almost a eulogy. Once things old were preferred. 
Everything old had lasted longer. Chronologically they came nearer to eternity. Old 
people were nearer to the grave and therefore nearer to God. Today the accent is on 
Youth. 

*** It is almost touching to read the exchange of letters between the Duchess of 
Brabant and St. Thomas Aquinas. The Duchess inquired whether she would be justified 
to tax the Jews — justified morally and legally. Our modern "leaders" are less squeamish 
about these matters. 



210 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

riage obligatory, conscription reached its high pitch, local flags were 
abolished, and mass arrests of members of the nobility set in. The 
governor of Austria, Herr Biirckel, declared solemnly that he extended 
a friendly hand to everybody — Socialist, Liberal, Democrat, or Com- 
munist — but not to the aristocrats, who never ceased to try to restore 
the Old Order by intrigues.* Religious instruction, hitherto obligatory, 
was made an optional subject approaching Horace Mann's ideas, mon- 
asteries were confiscated, and the general will was ascertained in a 
plebiscite.** Students were trained in labor camps for "honest, straight, 
manual work," intellectuals were assailed and great care was given to 
the improvement of communications. Even the very name of Austria 
was abolished. The feeling was general that a great, popular revolt of 
the masses against the First and the Second Estate, who had conspired to 
sell the honest, hardworking people to the internationally minded Habs- 
burgs, had succeeded. The government-regulated press fostered the notion 
that Austria had barely escaped a sinister fate. 

XIII. The people who suffer genuinely in majoritarian dictatorships 
are "only" minorities. The plebiscitarian dictatorship always favors (or 
intends to favor) the majorities. If the herdist spirit is strong the minor- 
ities will be automatically disliked for the mere fact that they dare to 
be "different." The hatred of the democratic masses for the minorities 
is the driving force and the cement for these "democratic" dictatorships 
under popular leaders (in Greek: S^ayoyo's)- Such minorities are the 
members of royal families, capitalists, priests, Jews, aristocrats, intel- 
lectuals, artists, highbrows, cripples, nuns, criminals, and lunatics. The 
persecution of the middle classes in Russia was only possible because 
this class was small. In Germany this class is strong. It may be educated 
to hate all "irregular" people without pity. 

XIV. There is a very small minority in the Germanies deadly set 
against the regime. We must first of all realize that ninety-five per cent 
of modern people have no ideas or convictions of their own. Five per 
cent have views and convictions but again ninety-five per cent of these 
do not dare to stand up for them. There are five per cent of five per cent 
who have courage and convictions. These make history for good or evil. 



♦The Conservatives were after all the only people who had (a) a political ideology 
which could not be assimilated on account of its basic hostility to modern ideas, and 
(b) a definite tradition going back to the First Reich and the hated Middle Ages. 

** There is little doubt that: (a) a real majority voted for Hitler (under considerable 
pressure) ; (£>) a real majority would also have voted for Schuschnigg if he would have 
been able to carry out his plebiscite. Only tiny minorities have real convictions. 



NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND THE THIRD REICH 211 

And if we ask ourselves why there is such little evidence of the three 
to four millions who have convictions without having the determination 
to stand up for them we must come to the clearcut conclusion that 
the civilized and cultured Europeans* of the Northwest have become 
trembling cowards. We must never underestimate the influence of a 
whole century of materialism, love of comfort, and determinism which 
deprived us, almost all of us (Christians and materialists alike), of 
our personal dignity, our courage, our honor, our elan. We are afraid of 
death, torture, exile, and concentration camps, but we are even more 
afraid of the deadliest weapon in the hands of the totalitarian state — 
loss of employment, poverty, destitution. With a stroke of the pen the 
totalitarian state can deprive us (mainly the city dwellers) of every 
possibility to earn our livelihood, the grimmest damnation in urban 
civilization. The menace of no employment, no salary, no food, and no 
roof has created in our day a dearth of great saints like Edmund Campion, 
St. Thomas More, or the Christians of the Arena. Only at the "periphery," 
in Macedonia, Spain, Finland, Russia, are things different. Only there 
do we witness the will to rebellion, self-sacrifice, and freedom from time 
to time. The "civilized" Europeans are homines oeconomici and the 
homo oeconomicus is born to be a slave. Only the saints are free. II n'y 
qu'une tristesse, c'est de n'etre pas des saint es, "There is but one sadness : 
lack of sanctity," says Leon Bloy's Femme pauvre. And that, exactly, is 
the great calamity of modern society. 

One has only to compare (the more cultured and less civilized) 
Austrians with their northern blood brothers. While the National So- 
cialists were able to dissolve the parties of the Reich by mere decrees, 
the Austrian Socialists fought bravely to the death. It was a foolish and 
suicidal stand which benefited only the Nazis, but it was honorable. 
The Austrian National Socialists instead of waiting for "elections" fought 
with the same insistence. The Spaniards on both sides rather wanted 
to die than to submit. 191 The Finns and Greeks fought like lions, while 
the Danes put down their arms after losing twenty-eight men. The Poles 
were not crushed until the Russians attacked them in the back, while the 
more progressive Czechs (in an equally hopeless situation) never fired 
a shot. 



*There is little doubt that the most untotalitarian American is not the straphanger of 
New York (in spite of his ubiquitous "democratic" creed) but the pioneering back- 
woodsman, the fishers of Cape Cod, or the Indians of the Southwest. 



212 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

For greater convenience we shall put these fourteen points, just listed, 
and the elementary facts about the Germanies, in a shorter syllabus: 

1. Prussia was nourished by France and England for selfish and 
psychological reasons into greatness. When they wanted to stop her it 
was too late. 

2. Prussia was not a typically feudal country but a bureaucratic 
middle-class state. Not the Junkers but the Huguenot refugees became 
the basis of modern commercial and industrial Prussia* 

3. Frederick II followed a traitorous, anti-German policy. His educa- 
tion, mind, and ancestry was largely French. Brutal, militaristic, agnostic, 
and "progressive," he had a deep admiration for the civilized West. 

4. Prussian militarism is not "aristocratic." Neither is conscription 
a Prussian invention. Militarism and conscription are phenomena of 
the French Revolution. Modern militarism is fundamentally connected 
with nationalism, ochlocracy, and industrialism. 

5. The greatest mistake of the century — committed by certain Prus- 
sian noblemen, American columnists, and English bankers — was to see 
in nationalism a Rightist idea. 

6. Capitalism is not less "leftish" than socialism. Capitalism as well 
as socialism accept technical "progress" unreservedly. Between excessive 
private capitalism and state capitalism there is a relationship as between 
nationalism and internationalism. This difference is one of intensity but 
not of essence. 

7. The Austrians are Germans and probably the "best" ones. The 
Germanic character of the Prussians is doubtful. When the Nibelungen 
Saga was first sung in the Austro-Bavarian dialect the Old Prussians 
and Pomeranians still worshiped their Slavic and Baltic gods. 

8. Even Francis Joseph considered himself to be a "German Prince." 
In 1866 he headed a German coalition against Prussians and Italians. 
The rule of progressive, Protestant Prussia finally affected the German 
character. 

9. National Socialism is the bureaucratic, Germanized version of the 
French Revolution.** 

10. Practically all ideas in National Socialism can be traced back to 
the following sources: 



* As to the middle-class character of the Nazi Party, see F. Neumann, Behemoth, 
New York, 1942, p. 399. 

** Guglielmo Ferrero in his recent work, The Reconstruction of Europe (New York, 
1941), emphasizes the fact (p. 323) that the French Revolution reaped in Italy a full 
victory only as late as 1922 (Mussolini's March to Rome!). 



NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND THE THIRD REICH 213 

a) The French Revolution and its immediate offshoots. 

b) The Old Testament (misapplied) and the Talmud (part of it). 

c) The Industrial Revolution. 

d) Calvinism. 191 

e) Karl Marx and Socialism. 

/) Biologism (Darwin, Grant, Stoddard, Chamberlain, Gobineau). 
g) Richard Wagner. 

It lacks though one "modern" influence — whiggish, pre-Manches- 
terian liberalism. 

11. There is no "putting the clock back" in the Third Reich which 
is the millennium of modernity. 

12. World War I was a struggle concerning Austria-Hungary. 

13. Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest were not brutal treaties. 

14. Germany won the war when Austria-Hungary was dismembered. 

15. The Treaty of Versailles itself is not the cause of National Social- 
isms, its rise and its victory. But the circumstances of the treaty acceler- 
ated the development. 192 

16. The Third Reich is not less a democracy in the classical and 
scholastic sense than the Soviet Union. 183 

17. The leaders of these totalitarian superdemocracies frequently 
acknowledge the "democratic" character of their governments, but the 
"Fascists" will seldom confess to be "Leftists." 

18. The German character — outside of urban Prussia — is not in the 
least herdist by nature. Prussia and Austria alone have a truly military 
tradition. One must not forget that the Germans still preserved their 
individualistic separatism and federalism long after all other European 
nations had been united for some time into centralistic, unilingual states. 

19. National Socialism is the fulfillment of Continental "liberalism" 
which stems largely from Rousseau and the ideas of Adam Smith in a 
collectivized version. The continental Liberals never were liberals in the 
English sense; their "liberalism" was nothing else but the struggle 
against the existing order and the old tradition. Foolishly enough the 
English Liberals supported their continental "coreligionists," never being 
fully aware of the abyss which actually divided them. 

The continental Liberals were the most narrow-minded and destructive 
intriguers between Calais and Constantinople. With their appeal to the 
upper middle classes they never foresaw the day when the masses would 
take over their ideas (after having twisted them about to suit their 
own taste) . The great ideas of Nazidom — utilitarianism, anticlericalism, 



214 THE MENACE OF THE HEED 

anti-Catholicism, compulsory education, mass production, regimentation 
— were taken from their catechism. They had fought grimly against the 
great medieval heritage and they have succeeded in destroying the bulk 
of it, thus paving the way for the Fascists and National Socialists who 
did nothing but popularize the continental brand of liberalism, which 
in turn was nothing else than democratism in disguise.* The modern 
Anglo-Saxon type of liberalism, on the other hand, with its relativism in 
the matters of ideas, philosophies, and religions will hardly ever appeal 
to the Continental who will never be induced to believe that if A is true 
and B contrary to A, B nevertheless can represent truth. If Catholicism 
is right then Protestantism is wrong and vice versa. Things on the Conti- 
nent are white or black and if they are actually gray they are worse 
than black because they might cause confusion. There is a grim and 
inescapable logic in this attitude. 

The only people who were liberal in Europe were old-fashioned Con- 
servatives of aristocratic stock with an eighteenth-century mentality. 
They were not "liberal" but generous. They were far too haughty and 
self-confident to get excited about the propagation of untruth. They 
had as little personal grievance about Protestants as Dr. Johnson about 
Catholics. Yet even their personal generosity did not alter the fact that 
they considered themselves (in religious as well as political matters) 
dead right and their opponents dead wrong. It was always the privilege 
of the bourgeois to invoke the law and the police. It is true that "liberal" 
governments on the continent, though despotic because of the lack of 
the old liberal tradition, which countries like England and the United 
States enjoyed, never went as far as to execute their adversaries (with 
the exception of the liberal terror in Rumania a generation ago where 
thousands of peasants were slaughtered). Yet to see an illiberal article in 
a "liberal" paper, or praise bestowed upon a nonliberal book in a "liberal" 
literary review, was out of the question. Comparing a "liberal" editor of 
the nineteenth century with a Roman Cardinal of the eighteenth cen- 
tury it would not have been difficult to point out which of these two could 



* Similarly continental writers made the mistake of confusing the labels "democratic" 
and "liberal" entirely. German essayists coined the term "demoliberal" which was used 
as a label for all sorts of democrats who sailed under the liberal flag. The support given 
to these continental Liberals by their naive English confreres strengthened the belief on 
the Continent that half of England was basically "Left" and that most of the English 
tradition was "Left." European Conservatives coming to liberal England for the first 
time were puzzled to find a country far more aristocratic (and undemocratic) than any 
other European country with the possible exception of Poland, Hungary, and San Marino. 



NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND THE THIRD REICH 215 

be called a genuine Liberal. The followers of the "liberal" politicians 
and writers have had finally to drop their farcical name. They are now 
proud to be Nazis. 

The new synthetic heresy of Germany and her ugly betrayal of the 
Occident will probably cause endless "scientific" investigations into the 
basic depravity of the German character. But all nations fall into error 
and sin from time to time. The Germanies are at present gravely ill and 
suffer from a terrific attack of herdism as no other European nation has 
experienced it before. 194 Ideologies are able to obscure inherent national 
characteristics for a long time but not forever. In relation to the Ger- 
manies with their strong tradition of political personalism, National 
Socialism is clearly a counter idea (Gegenidee). No country in Europe 
cared less for political uniformity, unity, and central control, and no 
country became a more hopeless and helpless victim of exactly the same 
tendencies, forming integral aspects of a devastating identitarian 
totalitarianism. 

One could imagine, of course, one hundred and fifty years ago, an 
English gentleman in Hampshire talking after dinner with his Prussian 
guest about the intrinsic wickedness of the French character. Let us 
assume for argument's sake that we are writing in the year 1794. Queen 
Marie Antoinette has just been beheaded and the Terror is at its worst. 
These two men would suddenly remember all sinister parts of French 
history; Louis XI, Philip the Handsome and the brutal suppression of 
the Templars, the Armagnacs, the atrocities of the Albigenses, the Jac- 
querie and the Secrets of the Bastille, the lettres de cachet and the 
chambres ardentes, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the many 
shady characters in French history. Our friends, in consequence, would 
now definitely be tempted to attribute the hideous atrocities of the 
Great "Democratic" Dawn to the inherent wickedness of the French 
national character. 

More outspoken views would have been expressed by the less educated 
people. The men in the pubs of Southampton and the roadmakers around 
Dover would have hardly bothered to explain the happenings with 
ideological or historical explanations. For them the French were a bad 
lot altogether; nothing but untrustworthy, Popish rabble with grubby 
faces, loud mouths, and closed purses. 

The upper layer of the English population, however, keeping up con- 
tacts with the most cultured emigres, who often stayed in their houses, 
would never have arrived at such summary conclusions. We have practi- 



216 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

cally no printed evidence for any fundamentally anti-French turn of 
mind among educated Europeans. Neither, of course, were books and 
pamphlets written for the masses. Nor were educated people imbued 
by nationalism, racialism, or the more modern excesses of anthropology 
or biology. To fall as low as to make the French character responsible 
for the excesses or brutalities of the Revolution was almost impossible 
for any person of culture, education, and savoir-vivre. 

Today the situation has entirely changed. We live in a time when 
even the aristocracy in the eager desire to be good clercs and executors 
of the general will goes the way of innkeepers, roadmakers, or chimney 
sweeps. There is Mr. Duff Cooper who, forgetting that this war is a 
crusade, made a start with a violent anti-German (not anti-Nazi) speech 
in April, 1940. Another protagonist of the idea of racial superiorities 
and inferiorities is Lord Vansittart, G.C.B., G.C.M., M.V.O., author 
of the incredible booklet The Black Record.™* He received, as chief 
diplomatic adviser of the foreign office, 3000 pounds a year to propagate 
Nazi racialism. And the same attitude can be seen in the letters of H. M. 
Harwood 196 or in an even more plastic way in the booklet of Mr. Theo- 
dore Kaufman, entitled Germany Must Perish* 

All these gentlemen, wielding such a mighty pen, should remember 
the words of Alexander Hamilton, that the people are a great beast. 
There were Danes who in April, 1940, cheered the first German troops, 
and also Austrians who had been stanch members of the "Patriotic 
Front" displayed the same attitude toward their "liberators." The same 
Russian mob who plundered the defenseless German Embassy in 1914 
out of sheer patriotism fought three years later on the barricades for 
International Revolution. The same people cheered Louis XVI, Robes- 
pierre, Napoleon, the rulers of the Holy Alliance, and Louis XVIII suc- 
cessively. Napoleon himself was loudly acclaimed by the brave Berliners 
after the battle of Jena. The same Londoners who cheered James II 
tweny-four hours later bowed to William III. 107 One sees that the ochlo- 
cratic habit of taking the masses seriously must finally lead to inter- 
national hatred. The words of Christ in relation to the mob, who crucified 
him, still has validity for the mob all over the world: "Father forgive 
them for they know not what they do." 



* Mr. Theodore Kaufman, an American resident, tries to calculate how many doctors 
and how much time it would take to sterilize all Germans. This idea was eagerly taken 
up by Mr. Ernest Hemingway who defended it in his preface to Men at War on pp. 
xxiii-xxiv. (New York, 1942.) Scratch a "democrat" and you always find a Nazi. 



Ill 

"MATER AMERICAE" 



"England, England, how I prayed for England/" — St. Vincent de Paul. 

English parliamentary government was initiated in 1215 by the Magna 
Charta. Seven years later the Hungarian nobility extorted from their 
king a similar document. Neither charter has anything to do with 
"democracy." 198 Neither country is a democracy in the classical sense 
today. In both cases we observe that privileges are granted to the First 
and the Second Estate and in both states trends toward semirepublican 
forms were apparent.* 

The power of the English nobility was weakened through the War of 
the Roses and the subsequent centralism and absolutism of Henry VII 
and Henry VIII. Yet a new aristocracy arose fortified by the plunder 
and loot of convents and monasteries. They supplanted the old families, 
and the seventeenth century offers us the spectacle of a gradual retreat 
and decrease of monarchical power before the onslaught of a plutocratic 
aristocracy, determined to transform England into a republic in every 
respect but in name. 

The Whigs were the representatives of this new independently minded, 
vigorous aristocracy and upper class, while the Tories standing in loyalty 
beside the throne were the exponents of the aulic aristocracy. 389 In Eng- 
land alone do we encounter the phenomenon that the new moneyed class 
treads in the footsteps of the old, dynastic, rural, and independent 
aristocracy. One can therefore hardly be surprised to see the English 



*The Magna Charta may be a "democratic document" if we consider the change 
from monarchy to aristocratic oligarchy a step toward democracy. Such a view is never- 
theless entirely unjustified. Democracy in a social sense is usually far stronger in abso- 
lute monarchies (Russia, for instance) than in aristocratic Republics (Genoa, Venice, etc.). 
The only "democratic" features of Magna Charta are the restrictions imposed upon 
the Jews. 

217 



218 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

monarchy succumbing to the assault of the Protestant moneybag in com- 
bination with the medieval, independent aristocratic spirit. It was indeed 
a rare and weird combination of forces which led to the retrenchment of 
royal power in the British Isles.* 

In the centuries between the Great Charter and World War II the 
English aristocracy was forced to give up many important positions. 
Thirty years ago there was, even in connection with the reform of the 
House of Lords, an antiaristocratic agitation strongly expressed in the 
election posters, but the sentiments which were aroused in this campaign 
went only skin deep. Today it is practically impossible for a peer to 
become Prime Minister, and thus we might speak about disabilities going 
together with titles. England is an amazing and paradoxical country; 
there are, in spite of the great emphasis upon "democracy," all indica- 
tions of the existence of an aristocratic and oligarchic rule, yet this gen- 
erally recognized fact caused little if any human resentment among the 
lower classes. There are actually a few dissatisfied, ambitious people 
among the middle classes who have a personal grudge against the old 
school tie and the reverses in the present war have made their protests 
appear louder than they are. It may be argued that these sentiments 
expressed are rather antiplutocratic than antiaristocratic. Yet the tacit 
and genuine, human acceptance of aristocratic or at least upper class 
leadership gives Britain the right to call itself a "democracy" without 
being one in reality. Hierarchic feelings always were very strong in 
England, but the extreme elasticity of the class system has always 
mitigated the apprehensions if aroused. Nowhere are classes more 
receptive to new elements, nowhere is it easier to rise socially, yet 
nowhere are the differences between the classes so marked as in 
England (with the exception of India and certain sections of the United 
States). Prewar Alpine Austria or Germany, Spain or even Poland 
were socially more democratic. Neither has any country in the world an 
Upper House made up solely of the lords and the bishops of the state 
Church. The Upper House of Hungary, a country notoriously "reaction- 
ary," has a large nonaristocratic majority and representatives of the 
Jewish faith (not to mention the Lutherans and Calvinists) .** 



♦The greater affinity of the Tories toward Catholicism is due to their patriarchal 
tradition of loyalty and their stronger sense of hierarchy. Yet this is far from implying 
that the Whigs were by their very nature more akin to the ideas of the Reformation. 
Magna Charta and its libertinarian spirit antecedes that development by many centuries. 

** We have no information whether the two Jewish Rabbis in the Hungarian Upper 
House continued their membership under the present German controlled regime. 



"mater americae" 219 

It is worth while pondering over the fact that England, the country 
with the maximum of liberty in Europe, has the greatest social inequali- 
ties, while Germany and Soviet Russia, the fortresses of egalitarianism, 
have the least liberty. 

There was in England not only a tacit acceptance of the class system 
but also a real admiration of the upper ten — an admiration which per- 
meated all other classes. Nowhere else in the world would socialist papers 
print descriptions of the dresses worn at the Royal Garden Party, and 
people will always prick up their ears if they hear a "strange" accent 
unavoidably betraying social background. Each class admires the "next 
higher" class and the members of the lowest classes have still the consola- 
tion that they might rise by virtue of their abilities to a higher station in 
life. England is a country of amazing careers ; she abounds in self-made 
men and yet she is not and never will be ochlocratic unless her days of 
decline set in. The man who has risen from the gutter to the exalted 
position of a peer will surprisingly seldom be snubbed by his colleagues 
in the House of Lords, but he may not get the full recognition by those 
in the lower stations of life. The thought of the fabulous rise of his father 
or grandfather, on the other side, will cause very little distress to the 
present bearer of the title.* 

A title does not mean everything in England. But the "blue blood" will 
always remain a factor in the British nobility. The Continental as well as 
the American frequently forget that a simple name does not always 
indicate, in England, a simple origin. A Herr Hitler could not possibly 
be a direct legitimate male descendant of a duke or prince, but Mr. 
Churchill counts the dukes of Marlborough as his direct ancestors. 

About the public school — not to be confused with the American public 
school — one must show a little more healthy skepticism. In its spirit it 
is ordinarily herdist and bourgeois and not in vain are the Communists 
such fervent admirers of a collective boarding school education which 
separates child and adolescent from the family. Eton is one of the few 
schools with a personal touch where the bourgeois hatred against the 
boy, who dares to be different, is reasonably absent. 

The public school is, in spite of its bourgeois undertone, nevertheless a 
class institution. Out of 615 members of the House of "Commons" over 



* See the novel Christmas Holiday, by Somerset Maughan which describes a very 
typical case of the social rise of an English family from suburban gardeners to titled 
aristocrats. 



220 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

400 are former public school boys. Of these 104 come from Eton alone. 
In the United States it would be an unheard of thing to see the Congress 
packed by one sixth of — let us say — Groton boys. Yet the papers in 
England commented very favorably upon the fact that Eton contributed 
so heavily to the burden of popular representation and not even the 
Daily Herald attacked Baldwin when he declared, immediately after his 
appointment to Downing Street, that he was going to pack his cabinet 
almost exclusively with Old Harrovians. He did not keep his promise 
though. The choice of the average voter is, as one can see, frequently 
only between an Old Etonian, an Old Harrovian, or an Old Wickhamist 
— these candidates being provided by committees who pick out those 
most likely to attract the masses.* Even the Labor Party has an ever 
increasing amount of ex-public school boys among their local and national 
leaders. 

One must yet add in all fairness that this elite — of birth rather than 
of intellect — is well aware of the current public opinion. They are ac- 
tually clercs in the sense formulated by Julien Benda. Though they can- 
not extricate themselves completely from the prejudices and vested 
interests of their class, history can scarcely refrain from giving the 
verdict that they have honestly striven to serve the public good and the 
general will. But sometimes, as, for instance, in the case of Hoare-Laval** 
plan, one would rather have seen them following their own judgment than 
the general will. 



♦Thus the member of parliament is not the personification of his constituency and 
his voters, like the ochlocratic "leader," but a man who rather embodies a projection of 
aristocratic values. 

** The defeat of the Hoare-Laval plan through general elections necessitated the em- 
ployment of sanctions against Italy and resulted in the total annexation of Abyssinia by 
Italy. The sanctions drove Italy into the arms of Germany. Mr. Eden is thus the 
Father of the Axis. The establishment of the Axis was the death warrant for Austria. 
The fall of Austria brought the total encirclement of the Czechoslovak republic. This 
encirclement forced the issue at Munich. Munich deprived the purely Czech parts of 
the republic of natural defenses which thus led to the events of March, 1939, and to 
the establishment of the protectorate over Slovakia. The occupation of Slovakia made 
Poland defenseless, depriving her of the last section of border which might have been 
left without protection. 

The reader is advised to check these facts on a map. The borders of 1919 were indeed 
drawn in such a fashion that the loss of only one single country involved the breaking 
down of the whole artificial building. 

Sir Charles Petrie in his twenty Years' Armistice and After (London, 1940), ex- 
presses a similar idea and emphasizes the fact that Sir Austen Chamberlain saw clearly 
the danger (p. 165). Yet he traces the disastrous development back to the building of 
the Westwall, not to the sanctions. Both made western intervention impossible. Yet the 
Westwall was far from being ready in March, 1938. The real blow was struck by Eden 
and the peace balloteers. 



221 

We come here to the painful chapter of British foreign policy. It was 
always a weak spot of England. Britain's policy toward continental 
affairs suffered from two shortcomings : its general tendency as well as its 
inconsistency. The latter is the result of the Parliamentary changes 
which also affected the foreign policy to such an extent that Britain was 
called "perfidious Albion." The defects in the general tendency are largely 
due to psychological reasons; shortsightedness, wrong speculations, lack 
of intuition and phantasy, a total misunderstanding of the continental 
psyche are just some of the characteristics. Neither foe nor friend was 
ever treated in the proper way. Neither France, nor the Germanies, nor 
Russia, nor Spain was ever properly evaluated. And the reason for these 
blunders and hesitations is the lack of the thing the Germans call 
Einfiihlungsvermogen, the ability to slip into the skin of somebody else 
and to look at the world with his eyes. The result was that England was 
great in feeding vipers in her bosom, while alienating her best potential 
friends. 

The basic reason for this psychological shortcoming has to be found in 
England's insularity and isolation, which is not predominantly of a geo- 
graphical nature. The Scandinavian peninsula is to all practical purposes 
also an island ; the fact that Scandinavia is connected with the European 
continent through the desolate boulders and glaciers of Lapland in the 
far north does not alter the necessity of approaching Sweden and Norway 
over a lesser or larger stretch of water. Neither was England insular 
during the Middle Ages when the channel proved to be no barrier for 
English thought entering the Continent or continental ideas conquering 
England. In spite of miserable communications European unity was never 
as strong as during the centuries preceding the discovery of America. 

It was the fact that England of all European countries alone had a 
religion for itself — the Church of England. Europe resounded, after the 
reformers appeared, with the unending din of theological quarrels be- 
tween Rome, Byzantium, Geneva, and Wittenberg. England which broke 
away from the Church, which had shaped the cultural and political face 
of the Continent, was now even spared the military and theological 
struggle between the Church and the heresies. England turned its face 
toward the seas and the very beating of England's heart, hitherto syn- 
chronized with that of the great Continent, adopted another rhythm. 
England, like no other European country, had its own Shinto, its own 
creed, and national messianism as well as total isolation were inevitable 
consequences of the willful cutting of the spiritual ties. 



222 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

This "splendid," or rather not so splendid isolation engendered a de- 
structive attitude in foreign relations which cost England very dearly.* 
There always were certain aristocrats (frequently Catholics) who had 
the advantage of social ties or blood relationship on the Continent, and 
who brought some accurate information and sound ideas to small, but 
usually not uninfluential circles. Yet public opinion in the past decades 
was largely fed by two very negative channels: semi-intellectualized 
Leftists, who were frantic in their admiration for Viennese and Berlin 
socialism, Russian Communism, Spanish "democracy," and French la'i- 
cisnte — and a few moronic press lords of the worst reactionary type 
who were so unintelligent that they fell for National Socialism. Yet the 
latter are a recent phenomenon and the others have a certain tradition 
behind them. The Whigs were certainly not herdists 200 but the liberal sim- 
pletons of the nineteenth century who displayed a delirious joy about the 
German and Italian risorgimento had little in common with their more 
far-seeing forerunners. These poor thinkers did not welcome the fall of 
Rome in 1870 less than the defeat of the Austrians at the hands of the 
prim, Protestant and progressive Prussians in 1866. How they had 
sabotaged the work of the Holy Alliance ! ** How they had worked with 
never relaxing fervor to undermine monarchical power on the Continent 
whenever the occasion arose! 201 These sins lose nothing of their magni- 
tude on account of the fact that they were perpetrated by a fundamen- 
tally conservative freedom loving, aristocratic, and antiherdist nation. 
Just the contrary. 

Britain's whole record during the twentieth century in foreign affairs 
has been deplorable. There we have the malevolent destruction of the 
Austro-Hungarian monarchy which led to the powerful expansion of the 
Third Reich, the substitution of the patriarchal regime of the Habsburgs 
by brutal, sordid little "democracies" who changed quickly into dictator- 
ships, the idiotic neutrality toward the Communists in Spain, the dismem- 
berment of Bulgaria which drove her finally into the arms of the Axis, 
the favoritism manifested toward Japan at the beginning of the century, 
the wrong handling of Russians and Scandinavians, the half-witted and 
unfortunately successful interventions against the Habsburgs, 202 Man- 
churia, the Italian sanctions, the dealings with Hitler; there is a whole 



* There is also such a thing as North American insularism. 

** Which, of course, infected by the terroristic ideas of the French Revolution, was 
too blindly confiding in mere power; the Holy Alliance was doomed by the lack of a 
dynamic appeal and the emphasis on "don'ts" rather than on constructive ideas. 



"mater americae" 223 

pagoda built up of endless mistakes and faux pas in the past forty years. 203 
In foreign affairs England has just the opposite of the Midas touch; 
whatever she tries to handle almost immediately turns into dross.* 

If we consider with St. Thomas Aquinas aristocracy to be, together 
with monarchy and republic, one of the morally justified forms of gov- 
ernment, we still have in the present form of government in Great Britain 
a good institution and maybe even one of the best in a rather evil 
world. 204 The aristocratic sentiment, surviving in spite of the surge of a 
formless and enormous middle class, poor in traditions, is a powerful 
obstacle against uniformism and identitarianism. This is of special im- 
portance at a time when Great Britain is forced by circumstances to 
abandon many of her great traditional values and when she also has to 
sacrifice so many personalistic traits to the inexorable moloch of effi- 
ciency. The anti-identitarian aristocratic tradition, even when it is repre- 
sented by Colonel Blimp, will be of the utmost value in the present 
struggle — and after all it is now up to the much maligned Colonel Blimp 
and the despised uneducated Cockney, and not to the "brilliant young 
men" of Bloomsbury, to save Britain as well as Europe. 

England's hope and England's strength is thus diversity. This diversity 
is even stronger in Scotland and Ireland,** which are more mountainous, 
more clannish, more divided in violently antagonistic spheres of interest. 
Scotland, besides the Eastern Alp area, is the only region in Europe where 



* A similar view, though slightly less outspoken can be found in Douglas Jerrold's ex- 
cellent small book Britain and Europe 1900-1940, London, 1941. Proof of Britain's 
miserable statesmanship (and not of an alleged basic immorality) is the fact that most 
decent causes in Europe have been cleverly linked up by the National Socialists directly 
or indirectly with their revolutionary war. The freedom of Croatia, the freedom of 
Slovakia, the Hungarian revision, the Bulgarian revision, the return of Bessarabia (to 
Rumania), the Finnish revision and territorial claims, the "liberation" of the Baltic 
states, the destruction of communism, the Spanish counterrevolution. Yet it is equally 
characteristic of the National Socialists, though adopting just causes, that they have 
always made them serve their own ends and this insincerity has affected all individual 
arrangements; thus the "liberation" of the Baltic states ended in their subjugation, the 
revision of Hungarian claims resulted in untenable and impossible borders, the whole 
Danubian solution as inaugurated by Berlin bears clearly the stamp of the Divide et 
Impera. The borders of Slovenia or the maritime share of Croatia have been allotted in 
a most cynical mood, the Hungarian-Slovakian relationship is perfectly hopeless. We do 
not even mention the disadvantages of the "New Order" for Poland because the will 
for destruction was here evident from the beginning. 

** Scotland has the advantage of a far better educational system than England. Every 
good educational system is highly "democratic" in its social and financial aspects but 
brutally aristocratic in its scholastic standards. 

Ireland suffers particularly from the fact that its Second Estate has to supplement a 
non-Catholic First Estate. We have there a similar situation as in feudal-clerical- 
democratic French Canada. 



224 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

the national dress is still worn by the upper classes who in other countries 
have a disdain for "peasant costumes." 

There are certainly grave social injustices to be found in the United 
Kingdom. In certain regions conditions can be found which cry to heaven 
for vengeance and have to be remedied.* But all precautions should be 
taken lest this process of rendering social justice become an excuse for a 
totalitarian and identitarian transformation of British social and political 
life. It is decidedly not Low's asinine Colonel Blimp who is a real threat 
to Britain but Strube's petty bourgeois "Little George" (a ratlike edition 
of Mr. Milquetoast) who would not be too discriminating in choosing 
another color for his shirt, like his German counterpart Herr Munke- 
punke with the fat neck and the bellowing voice, of the Fliegende Blat- 
ter. Neither the mining towns, nor the palaces or the farm yards menace 
the Occident, but Suburbia. And Suburbia stands for equality which 
destroys true society. Inequality is exactly Britain's strength and guaran- 
tee that "Britons never will be slaves." 

The end of all hierarchy is the end of Britain. If Britain would follow 
the lead of Mr. H. G. Wells, the great prophet of Suburbia, visualizing 
the ultimate victory of ants or termites over humanity, the very end of 
Britain would be a foregone conclusion. But Britain is not a nation of 
shopkeepers as it is generally assumed ; the shopkeeper complex is rather 
the dismayed discovery of aristocrats who suddenly became aware with 
horror of the commercialization of their country. The surprising amount 
of commercial spirit in the (older) English aristocracy is also due to the 
determination to survive under whatever circumstances. 

Such an attitude has its dangers if one keeps in mind that a class 
might lose its own soul. The inclusion of persons in the rank of nobility 
on account of their wealth,** through an (indirect) buying of arms and 
titles, is another source of the plutocratization of the aristocracy and 
nobility. 

Apart from Britain's hierarchic structure there are even greater posi- 
tive values which will always keep her afloat. A specially hopeful sign is 
the intellectual strength of her Christianity which is matched by a 
beautiful life of faith. Christian concepts have shaped the characters and 



* See MacArthur and Long's No Mean City, a terrifying, dramatized description of 
the slums in Glasgow (London, 1936). 

** In most parts of Europe titles were only given for achievements in the administra- 
tion, the army and navy, in arts, sciences, and education. The richest German with 
many civil merits was merely given a knighthood (Krupp), Maurice Maeterlinck on 
the other hand was made a count. 



225 

minds of persons so different as the late Mr. George Lansbury and Lord 
Halifax. Britain's participation in the present crusade for Europe and 
the Christian traditions of the Occident, as well as her courageous stand 
in adversities are a further indication that England has not "come to an 
end" 205 as her enemies and apprehensive admirers alike had so often 
prophesied. England has left the path of splendid isolation (whether 
against or according to her wish is impossible to tell), an isolation which 
harbored the danger of self-complacency, decay, and sterility. 

Britain's isolation, keeping her aloof from the Continent, 206 which was 
characterized by such phrases as "Dark men begin at Calais," has been 
terminated. Yet her reunion with the old, dark, sinister, motherly Con- 
tinent will not be a joyous one. It will be bought, as every other historical 
achievement, by streams of blood and tears. There was something great 
in that gesture when England came to the defense of Poland ; it was the 
denial of an immensely egoistic past, marred by the memories of the 
Opium War, and South Africa ; it was the acceptance of suffering involv- 
ing the risk of her very existence in order to save great final values. And 
it is exactly by this ordeal that England is going to expiate the sins of her 
past. 

These include — last not least — those committed toward Ireland. It 
was in the case of the Evergreen Island that England's inability to under- 
stand a "foreign" psychology seemed most fatal. Ireland shared further- 
more, with the Continent, the Catholic mentality, which the Protestant 
is practically never able to grasp, and while the Continent remained Eng- 
land's China, Ireland became England's Korea. Nothing would have been 
easier than to appease Ireland and to preserve it — not perhaps within 
the United Kingdom — but as an integral part of the British Common- 
wealth of Nations. 207 

There is always the danger that Britain's lack of intuitive understand- 
ing 208 in continental matters will prevail after her victory and that the 
commitments she already made will bind her to a new disorder. But if 
England is in this war not with a feeling of racial superiority, like her 
opponents, or for the self-appointed glory of an international policeman, 
but guided by a sentiment of contrition, determined to serve the Occident 
and Christianity humbly and dutifully, then this war will be won by her 
morally and spiritually, unlike the last one which was a total loss. 209 
Then all nations will look up to her and the motto on the arms of the 
heir to the throne will shine in new glory. 



IV 

THE AMERICAN SCENE 



"Democracy, I do not conceyve, that God did ever ordeyne as a 
fitt government either for church or commonwealth. If the 
people be governors, who shall be governed? As for monarchy 
and aristocracy, they are both of them clearly approoved and 
directed in Scripture." — John Cotton. 

The peculiar strength of England, which is due to the fact that an upper 
class with numerous aristocratic elements actually directs the destinies 
of the country, was also characteristic of the United States of America. 
This becomes evident if one visits Jackson Square in Washington. There 
in the middle of this open space adjoining the White House one can 
admire Old Hickory parading on a horse, yet the effigy of the paragon 
of modern American "democratic" ideas is surrounded by four statues 
each representing a hero of the War of Independence which had taken 
place two generations before the presidency of Andrew Jackson. There 
we see Tadeusz Kosciuszko the Pole of old, noble Lithuanian lineage, 
Baron von Steuben, the Comte de Rochambeau, and the Marquis de 
Lafayette. Count Kasimierz Pulaski, the only General who was killed in 
the Revolution, has his monument in Savannah, but Baron de Kalb on 
account of his undistinguished parentage was probably not considered 
worthy enough to be represented in the exalted society that had come to 
this country in order to fight and, if necessary, to die for liberty — not 
for equality. 

American Independence, and one should never lose sight of this fact, 
ivas not the result of a "bolshevik" conspiracy, but the outcome of the 
halfhearted and later more determined efforts of a group of whiggish 
aristocratic squires who had the support of the haute bourgeoisie in the 

226 



THE AMERICAN SCENE 227 

commercial cities. 210 This support was given in England to the Whigs of 
the Motherland by a corresponding group in the City. The North Amer- 
icans loyal to the King, on the other hand, were automatically called 
"Tories." 

The British King was, for our aristocratic squires (among whom we 
find George Washington, descendant of King John II), nothing but a 
stubborn and arrogant primus inter pares, and the republican form of 
government promised them an aggrandizement of their power as well as 
more Liberty — the great aristocratic ideal.* They disliked the idea of 
being a "royal" nobility which radiates only a secondary light like the 
moon.** Here was now the opportunity to become "suns" again. There 
were men like Alexander Hamilton, a brilliant bourgeois, who wanted to 
re-introduce monarchy, but the squirarchy was glad to have escaped the 
central control. George Washington, who had aspired to the title "High- 
ness," found his wish frustrated. Neither had the Judges of the Supreme 
Court the title "Your High Mightiness" granted by the Constitution — 
as Benjamin Franklin proposed it in later years. 

There was also an identitarian, bourgeois undercurrent hostile against 
liberties, while antimonarchical tendencies springing from herdist motives 
were not entirely lacking. The liberty-loving middle classes of New Eng- 
land were in a frenzy after the passing of the Quebec Act which gave 
religious liberty to the French Canadians. Shouts of "No King, no 
Popery ! " became loud and added later to the revolutionary fervor. 211 

The aristocratic genius of the Revolution found only a weak and in- 
direct expression in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitu- 
tion because the aristocratic sentiments of all times are seldom expressed 
in coherent and logistic philosophies. These two basic documents breath 
a spirit which is neither aristocratic nor "democratic" (the word democ- 
racy is not mentioned once), it has elements of Rousseau's philosophy 
and yet it is compatible with Catholic teachings, which again does not 
mean that it is a typical Catholic document. But to state that the Decla- 
ration of Independence is based upon the philosophy of St. Robert Bel- 
larmine is a sign of wishful thinking. 212 

Viewed against the historical background of the eighteenth century, 



* Seifert in his Die Weltrevolutiondre declares Liberty to be the ideal of the nobility, 
equality of the urban classes, and fraternity of the peasantry. 

** There are therefore also two different conceptions about "equality." There is the 
idea of the Republic where everybody is a proletarian and the Republic where every- 
body is a king. In Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, we encounter a "Loyalist" 
who proposes that everybody should be addressed as "Don." 



228 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

one can risk the statement that the Declaration is a hierarchical docu- 
ment. 213 The influence of Rousseau's philosophy (which could not be 
short circuited) must be taken into account as well as the inordinate 
admiration of the classical world. Yet the republics, even the democratic 
republics of Ancient Greece, were not egalitarian in our modern sense. 
There was always a class of slaves and metics with diminished rights. 
Plato and Aristotle, who opposed democracy violently, were well known 
to all educated men at that time and educational standards were high. 
If one compares the intellectual crop of three million Americans in the 
late eighteenth century with the output of the one hundred and thirty-five 
million nation of today one may arrive at very interesting deductions. 
Even Jefferson, who cared little for birth, was certainly not an egalitarian 
in the modern sense ; he believed strongly in a hierarchy of intellects. If 
one takes the attitude of Christopher Hollis,* who wrote very candidly 
that the Declaration of Independence was signed by a handful of slave 
owners who declared it to be self-evident that human beings are created 
equal, then one has no other choice than to consider the Founding 
Fathers to have been either hypocrites or lunatics. Yet they were neither 
if we take the circumstances as well as intentions into consideration.** 

The Electorate of the United States used to be extremely small; 
after British pattern, only the gentry, and the well to do were enfran- 
chized. In many states the middle classes were able to share the political 
life yet the "proletariat" was definitely excluded (with the exception of 
Vermont). Direct democracy after the Swiss model was conspicuously 
absent and the democratic elements of the colonial period were only 
strong in the framework of local administration. 214 Even the plutocratic 
influences were not so overpowering as in the second half of the nine- 
teenth century. 215 The strong aristocratic control survived in the South 
for a long time. The Constitution of South Carolina in 1788 gave the 



* Christopher Hollis: The American Heresy, London, 1931. 

** The republican tendencies of aristocracies have been dealt with already on pp. 
47-49. It is interesting to see how frequently aristocratic groups paid only lip service 
to monarchical principles. The return of their royal masters would put them in a posi- 
tion where they could only play second fiddle to the monarch's first. As to the anti- 
democratic attitude of the Founding Fathers see the explanatory note, "What of 
Democracy?" 

The aristocratic, libertinarian principles of America find expression in such apparently 
trifling privileges as the freedom of bearing arms of American citizens. The freedom of 
bearing arms existed only in one European province by 1938 — in the Tyrol, where the 
National Socialists canceled quickly this last remnant of medieval liberties after the 
Anschluss. 



THE AMERICAN SCENE 229 

vote only to men who had at least SO acres of landed property. A senator 
had to have real estate worth at least 2000 pounds, an equivalent of 
about 25,000 dollars in 1942. The Lieutenant Governor had to prove 
ownership of property worth at least 10,000 pounds — today the equiva- 
lent of about 150,000 dollars. 216 In spite of the disestablishment of the 
Anglican Church, only Protestants had full civil status. Slavery was 
abolished only two years after the Ukaz liquidating serfdom was issued 
in Russia, and serfdom was something far milder than slavery. Even 
today there are in many states defamatory laws against colored people 
which are as strict and brutal as the Nuremberg laws and surpass them 
often in rigor. These laws and regulations have furthermore popular 
support which facilitates their application. 

Slavery was naturally nothing to boast of; the frequent patriarchal 
treatment of slaves does not alter the fact that the idea of selling and 
buying human beings is the outcome of a thoroughly commercialized 
mentality worthy of a modern baseball or football club, which so often 
"trade in" their declining celebrities. Yet it is difficult to decide whether 
the main reason for the war of secession was to be found in the egoistic 
economic consideration of Southerners or in the determination to oppose 
the centralizing efforts of the Federal Government. The fact that most 
southern generals and political leaders had few or no slaves seems to 
justify the latter assumption. We have seen it in our days that the 
Catholic Church in the United States assailed the "humanitarian" Child 
Labor Amendment for reasons which find their justification in the 
strongly anticentralistic tradition of the Church, a tradition, unfortu- 
nately, not always sufficiently upheld. 

The United States were in 1800 or 1810 not more commercialized 
than France or Germany and certainly no less so than England or Bel- 
gium. The "democratic" spirit was to all outward appearances not 
stronger than in Holland or Norway. The Americans were at that time 
an ordinary, freedom-loving nation which honored traditions and could 
boast of a well-stratified society based on the best British and Occidental 
traditions. This society was hardly "Americanized," in the sense soap- 
box orators and tabloid papers use this name, and the romantic spirit was 
as strong as in Europe. "Democracy" was looked upon as a monstrosity. 217 

The calamity began through Andrew Jackson who was supported by an 
unstratified society of trappers, frontiers people, and wild-west pio- 
neers. 218 They were, of course, a fine and valuable type of men who con- 



230 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

tributed conspicuously to the greatness and growth of the United States 
and were far from dreaming like some of our "Progressives," of a Brave 
New World with human ants, guided by per capita ratios of radios and 
iceboxes. Thus the democratization* of the United States was begun on 
the "Swiss" and agrarian, not on the megalopolitan line; the climax of 
the democratic process was only reached with the inorganic mass im- 
migration from Europe in the forties. 

About the quality of this immigration one has to be highly skeptical. 
Nobody ever leaves his homeland for good if he is not to some extent 
diracinS. It is an idle illusion to think that the most courageous and 
enterprising Europeans came to America ; the truth is that an overwhelm- 
ing majority of all immigrants who crossed the Atlantic were either a 
personal failure in Europe and hoped to make riches quickly in the New 
World or that they belonged to a political, racial, or religious group 
which had failed collectively in the struggle for power and survival. It is 
difficult to imagine somebody leaving his fatherland because he was too 
happy and too successful. Neither were there such idealists who just 
yearned for a "harder life." Competition was far harder in Europe and 
there was always less elbowroom, but men like Thyssen, Lord Nuffield, 
Bat'a, Schneider, Krupp, and Juan March have proved that spec- 
tacular careers in the industrial, commercial sphere are not an American 
privilege and it is too well known that "birth" is a mere handicap in the 
political field of the Continent.** 

Success became the great nostalgia for many Americans because they 
or their forefathers had written on their forehead the words defeat or 
failure.*** We can see this well in some of the "patriotic" poems of 
Edgar Guest, reflecting a popular sentiment, which abound in the praise 
of material success. 

Yet immigration proved at one and the same time to be a factor of 
diversity. It gave a certain variety to the big cities with their various 
"quarters" in which immigrants of specific races huddled together. (The 
smaller and medium-sized town dominated by the middle-class, not the 
midwestern isolated farm, became the strongest factor in the process of 

* A definitely wicked Jacksonian reform was the introduction of the spoil system; 
Jackson was convinced that governmental affairs were so simple that every adult could 
cope with them successfully. His "reform" of the Presidential Electorate was similarly 
of an ochlocratic character. 

** See also: H. L. Mencken, Prejudices III. Series. New York, 1922. A. Knopf, 
pp. 22-24. 

*** This should not be construed as a sign of "racial inferiority" or the like. 



THE AMERICAN SCENE 231 

Americanization.) And while the poor, penniless, and prideless immigrant 
started automatically to imitate the established families, which were 
Anglo Saxon (and Dutch), these retained much of their influence by 
intermarrying after British pattern with the rising elements of the 
plutocracy. 

The main emphasis was now shifted from "culture" to "civilization." 
This change was deplorable but almost necessary. Culture is personal 
and something rooted; civilization on the other hand is "international," 
interchangeable, and ambulant. (See Appendix IV.) There could be no 
melting pot, no Americanization on the basis of a new synthesis of 
Slovakian peasant dresses, Sicilian songs and Swedish folk dances. Only 
the jalopy, the overall, the ice-cream soda and the corner drugstore could 
serve as common denominators. In order to denationalize and to re- 
nationalize the "Bohunk," American society at large had to make its 
change from the emphasis on culture to the acclamation of depersonal- 
ized, collective, and common civilization. It was self-sacrifice for the 
native and often torture for the newcomer. It is difficult to see how this 
procedure could have been avoided. We still feel the effects of its 
aftermath. 

The result of this inorganic mass immigration of prospective voters and 
the survival of historical and semihistorical classes resulted in the most 
curious cocktail of aristocracy and "democracy." The old aristocratic 
thirst for liberty, as opposed to the middle class readiness for total slav- 
ery, is still alive and is decidedly the noblest American tradition. No- 
where in the world is the impact of the identitarian and egalitarian forces 
of modern technicism more keenly felt, yet there are few countries that 
can boast of a less homogeneous population, less homogeneous in race, 
language, and religion. There is much lip service paid to Liberty and much 
lip service to Equality, but the latter has a far smaller magnetic attrac- 
tion than one is wont to believe. The United States are of a unique com- 
plexity, and this complexity together with its vastness and geographical 
diversity have proved to be the most potent obstacles for the relentless 
attacks of herdism and identitarianism. There are inroads of "democ- 
racy" and inroads of aristocracy in the opposite domains, and the in- 
tricacies of the sub-Continent called the United States are such that their 
full description would be a good antidote for the average European's 
imaginary simpleton, the "praktischer Amerikaner ." Americans are 
neither simple, nor practical. 219 

The average American may correspond to these qualifications but the 



232 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

average American is not the typical American. Averages are alike the 
world over, but extremes differ widely and it is always the extreme who 
is truly representative — except in the gray and inhuman world of dead 
statistics. In order to compare England with America no sensible man 
would line up a commuter of Welvyn Garden City with a commuter from 
East Babylon; yet a juxtaposition of Churchill with Roosevelt or Lin- 
coln with Gladstone would give a concrete picture. Not the megalopolitan 
and suburban mob, which is interchangeable because it has little "face" 
and personality, is "typical" and representative for a country. The 
"typical American" is therefore likely to be found on a ranch in Nevada 
or Wyoming, in the pueblos of New Mexico, in the hills of Kentucky, 
in an old house in Boston and in the bayous of Louisiana. It would be 
interesting to find out how much they care for showers, iceboxes, com- 
munity life, etiquette, and bridge competitions. 220 

It is a superstition of many Europeans, and also of some Americans, to 
believe that the United States has a classless society. The absence of titles 
does not justify this view and if one mentions the existence of social 
stratas one is often told to go out West where such social differentiation 
does not exist. Yet gigantic and socially "democratic" states like Nevada 
have a population of less than one hundred thousand, and most Amer- 
icans live in the quadrangle between Chicago, St. Louis, Washington, and 
Boston, and it is this part of the United States which is further ahead 
in the scale of material development and therefore has greater 
significance. 

Aristocratic as well as plutocratic elements have helped here in a 
stratification of Society and the contribution of the plutocratic element 
has not always been the happiest one. It is an artificial element, but it 
has to be regarded as a reality. 

American society, till the advent of mass immigration, was fairly 
static. If hypothetical speculations are permitted one may be tempted to 
say that without the rush after the thirties and forties the States would 
have developed on social lines parallel to those in England and in other 
parts of the Occident. It would not have become "America" with an 
exclamation mark but another "regular" Western country characterized 
merely by the absence of a Catholic medieval tradition. Yet the mass 
immigration threw America back to an earlier stage of development, in 
the chronological sense. America by 1810 had entirely "caught up" with 
Europe; America in 1890 was partly back in the seventh century a.d., 



THE AMERICAN SCENE 233 

when the unstratified society of barbarians started to settle down. Even 
today the immigration of 1840-1924 has not been completely "digested," 
yet the whole American Scene, the whole American social life today is 
characterized by the very process of social stratification which is always, 
under all circumstances, and in every country a painful procedure, as 
painful as the pangs of birth. The dominant position of women is just 
another symptom of this situation. 221 

Every intelligent foreign observer will be struck by the sight of the 
rapid formation of classes from the shapeless fragments which were 
dumped on the Atlantic shores of America. There was actually never 
a moment of stagnation. The formative process of social stratification is 
one of the strongest factors of American life, and it produced phenomena 
which are as ridiculous, uncharitable, and weird as those we could observe 
in European countries in their respective formative periods — in Eng- 
land during the eleventh century, in early Moscovian "Russ," in the 
Balkans after the Turkish withdrawal, in France under the Merovingians 
and Carolingians. 

From the forties of the past century on, social ambition was the 
most potent factor in American social life and the greatest incentive for 
the American self-immolation in hard work. The American male of 
the white-collar class does not work himself to death because he wants 
to buy more commodities or because he wants to spend lavishly his 
earnings in interesting travels. What he wants is the desired place in 
the community, the better "background" for his children. Up to the age 
of forty-five when he gets his nervous breakdown, or to the age of fifty- 
five when he dies in the Cancer Hospital, or at 60 when he is found dead 
over the dictaphone, he hardly gets more than a fortnight a year off from 
his work to enjoy life and freedom (like his wife or his daughter). There 
is the type of the young lawyer in downtown New York who works daily 
till eleven p.m. in order to "make good." And this "making good" is 
nothing but the flat denial of equality, so much emphasized; it means 
rising to a "higher station in life," to a higher class. 

The proverbial man from Mars, free from any bias, would be struck 
in the United States by the aspect of a society trying madly, desperately, 
and with an almost religious intensity, to get rid of its primeval "demo- 
cratic" and egalitarian condition. The society pages, read avidly by 
taxi drivers, charwomen, and waitresses, the social registers, and color 
distinctions, the emphasis laid on greater or lesser "prominence" of 
"civic leaders," the hints at "blue blood" and "restricted neighborhoods," 



234 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

and the macabre earnestness and ceremonial etiquette with which social 
events are celebrated would remind him of a stage of Martian society 
when its members were not yet properly labeled and had therefore no 
courage to relax its rules and personal exclusiveness. Every bridge drive, 
every reception arranged in order to "honor" a debutante, the rivalries 
of glamor girls (all well born and endowed with hard cash), the snob- 
bing of actresses, Jews, and producers (quite in step with eighteenth- 
century England), the advertisement of "socialites" smoking Camels, 
drinking wines, or pouring whiskies, as well as the endless inquiries about 
questions of etiquette in the dailies, plus the rising sale of Emily Post's 
manuals — all these phenomena show not only the youngness of a so- 
ciety but also the grim determination to be molded after some hier- 
archic pattern, to continue the aristocratic tradition of the Anglo-Saxon 
world, and to put structural liberty above equality. A competitive society 
knows no other equality than the equality of opportunity. To maintain 
that American Society is intentionally egalitarian and "democratic" is 
sheer folly. We can, naturally, pass a judgment over a given society, 
only if we compare it with others. A misjudgment may therefore be 
forgiven to an American who never had the occasion to go abroad and 
is reared in Hollywoodian conceptions about continental European so- 
ciety. But if a traveled man in the possession of the means of comparison 
repeats the cant about American egalitarianism in society matters, he 
can justly be accused of idiotic stubbornness or utter blindness, because 
never in history has a society striven so sincerely to pass quickly through 
its egalitarian stage of development as the American. 

This process is accelerated, thanks to English traditions and English 
influence, as well as due to the fact that the older aristocracy, largely 
surviving, can be used as a "yardstick." This struggle has its tragicomical 
aspects, like the "social registers" published by small committees who 
decide who does and does not belong to "good society." Competing com- 
mittees, set up by those snubbed and left out, publish other registers and 
"blue books," and in the end we have quarrels and antagonisms as bitter 
as those related by Kotoshikhin, the Russian historian, who described 
the hatreds and intrigues of the Boyars in connection with their seating 
at the Czar's table. Only countries with a fixed caste system like India 
are ignorant of the vices of snobism. 

Yet the "democratic" past and the mammonistic present oscillates in 
the background, and social life in the United States can thus not be 
dissociated from publicity which after all, costs money. No press in the 



THE AMERICAN SCENE 235 

world, not even the dailies of England, Hungary, or Afghanistan, devote 
so much space to social life. The imitative urge of the "lower" classes 
is almost limitless and the interest for the doings, whims, and enter- 
tainments of the Upper Ten are truly "national." America and England 
are in this respect so near to each other ; the marriage of Princess Marina 
to the Duke of Kent, the marriage of a princess of a then exiled royal 
house of the Balkans with the younger son of a symbolic ruler, is prob- 
ably still in many people's memories on account of the overwhelming 
publicity it received. In an "autocracy" of the type of Wilhelminian 
Germany or Franz Joseph's Austria, or even in Imperial Russia such a 
troth would not have interested anybody except a few courtiers and the 
Dames des Halles. Marriages of imperial princes or archdukes would 
have been reported with a few lines in the papers. Yet in the "Marina 
Marriage" (just as in the case of the Simpson affair) the ochlocratic 
tendency for publicity as well as the romantic and nostalgic curiosity 
for the doings of the "higher ups" cooperated harmoniously. 

The colleges and universities suffer similarly from these diseases of a 
formative period. Sororities and fraternities are frequently hotbeds of 
snobism and the educational institutions themselves often vie with 
each other in the social field. Many young men and women merely go 
to college for the same reason as young Englishmen go to public school, 
i.e., for social "connections" and social "improvements." 222 But while 
all these tensions and the spirit of competition in America's formative 
period are in a way "healthy" and natural, there is another aspect of 
social life with little elasticity, little compromise, and far greater bitter- 
ness — the question of race. The Protestant attitude toward racial matters 
has created a multiplicity of tensions and prejudices which are only 
matched by those now rampant in the German superdemocracy. 

Racialism as a herdist feeling always went hand in hand with ochloc- 
racy. In Periclean Athens men with a foreign father or mother were 
not considered to be full citizens. Human beings seem unfortunately to 
have an inborn urge to look down on somebody. Where social stratification 
is incomplete the contempt for the foreigner appears as a substitute for 
a pagan disdain for the lower classes. (No nation has a stronger dislike 
for foreigners than the French or the Swiss.) To this eager seeking for 
the "underman" one has to add the dislike for diversity, and to that 
identitarian sentiment may still be joined semireligious ideas about one's 
own superiority or messianic mission. Differences in nationality manifest 



236 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

themselves largely by a characteristic of speech, a "foreign accent"; 
differences in race are more fatal because they exclude assimilation and 
add the barrier of "color." The German or Irish immigrant who did not 
open his mouth was still a neutral entity, the Negro, the Jew, the "dirty- 
white" immigrant from southern Europe immediately gave away his 
"secret." 

The idea of the Chosen People or the Chosen Race is part of Amer- 
ica's cumbersome inheritance from Judaism through Genevan channels. 
Many of the Calvinist and Puritanical preachers saw in the war of 
extermination against the Indians a parallel of the struggle of the 
Israelites against Philistines, Moabites, and Amalekites. The slaying of 
the Red Man became almost a sacred rite. These wars of extermination 
were waged at a time when Suarez and Vitoria thundered from the 
pulpits of the University of Salamanca against the assassination of 
Indians and when the Spanish kings had already liquidated the regime 
of the murderous adventurers of the type of a Francisco Pizarro upon 
the imprecations of the saintly Bishop Las Casas. This is part of the 
reason why there are millions of Indians and Mestizos south of the 
Colorado River and very few north of it. 223 

Later Negroes, Chinese, Japanese, Jews, and the Mediterranean im- 
migration came to this country. The quota laws of 1924 were already 
issued in the spirit of true racialism. America never lacked racial ideolo- 
gists and ideologies. Those of the more popular type influenced the Ku 
Klux Klan or other racialist Know-Nothings, those of the more intel- 
lectual breed were read in certain German circles prior to the rise of 
National Socialism. Hanfstangl acquainted Hitler with American racialist 
ideas and usages which made a deep impression upon him. Men like 
Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant are, together with Gobineau, Dar- 
win, Wagner, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain (probably against their 
own intentions) forerunners of National Socialism. 22 * 

It is a well-known fact that the Negro is, in the South, a second class 
citizen. 225 But even in the rest of the United States, in the land of Whit- 
man, Emerson, Lincoln, and Susan P. Anthony he has not the same 
recognition as in the City of the Bourbons and the Bastille, or in the 
benevolent autocracy of Salazar, or anywhere else in Europe except in 
progressive Germany. It is a fact that colored people are more respected 
in the Old World with its medieval memories than in the Protestant 
part of the New World. Paul Robeson has infinitely more trouble to 



THE AMERICAN SCENE 237 

get a hotel room in New York than in Madrid. It would be difficult to 
imagine an equivalent of a black vice-president of the Chambre des 
Deputes or the black French undersecretary for colonial affairs (1935) 
in this country where people are accustomed to think of Negroes in 
terms of redcaps and bootblacks. But there are aspects of the color 
question which are far more unpleasant than these. Even in the more 
hierarchic South, with its Jim Crow car and the ugly Scottsborough 
case, the results of a materialistic conception of man becomes apparent. 228 
Evolutionism gave to the old superstitions a new "scientific" cloak and 
the view that the Negro stands somewhere between man and ape gains 
ground rather than loses it.* 

Where herdist feelings can finally lead is well demonstrated by an 
event that happened not so long ago in the deep South. A young Catholic 
fell in love with a mulatto girl. No social stigma would have been at- 
tached to him had he made of this young woman his mistress. But having 
more respect for the law of God than for the state law he took her 
to the North and married her secretly. Some time after the return of 
the couple to the South (where the woman was considered to be the 
young man's lover) a child was born to them. Unfortunately it came out 
at the baptism that the infant was not the fruit of an illegitimate union. 
"General will" was outraged, the law of the herd was violated and 
"action" had to be taken. The populace stormed the house, murdered 
the mother and the baby.** No comment is necessary. 

If defenders of the equal civil rights of all Americans voice their 



♦Many people will insist that there is something about the Negro face which is 
reminiscent of the monkey. That may be so but there is another side of the story; the 
pure blooded African has no visible hair on his body which the white male definitely 
has. The white race together with the Ainus and the Australian aborigines is the 
hairiest race in the world. And is that not rather reminiscent of apes? 

In pre-Darwinian times we also find biblical explanations given for the diversity of 
races. The superstitious belief that the Negro descends from Cain who was guilty of 
"misconduct" with a female gorilla is widely accepted in the South. The Reverend La 
Peyrere, a Dutch preacher of Huguenot descent, published, in the middle of the seven- 
teenth century, a book in which he affirmed that some human beings had been created on 
the Sth ( ! ) day of the Creation. This preadamitic theory foreshadowed the concepts of 
modern racialism. 

** Our racial discrimination was frequently mentioned by the more intelligent isola- 
tionists as the reason for our "staying out." They indicated that America had no right 
of sharing a crusade where equal rights had been made an issue. This argument is less 
cogent than it seems at the onset and reminds one of the objection of medieval sectarians 
to pay obedience to anybody who is not in the state of grace. But the man who can- 
not help himself may well help somebody else, and vice versa. If it is easier to extinguish 
the neighbor's burning house than one's own then it is better to aid where help can 
show results. 



238 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

grievances, they are usually told that miscegenation is not desirable. 
This is definitely not the issue. In the knowledge of the erotic tastes 
and psychological tendencies of the North American it is very doubtful 
whether miscegenation would never reach greater proportions than right 
now. Yet social intercourse with Negroes and (what is much more im- 
portant) equal opportunities given to colored citizens of these United 
States do not mean automatically or necessarily an increase of inter- 
marriage. Americans suffer somehow from the haunting complex of a 
high school romance, office romance, college romance, subway romance, 
resort romance, boat trip romance. Literature and the movies have filled 
their imagination to that extent with a love-and-marriage complex that 
they can hardly imagine inviting the Lincoln Whites or the Washington 
Dukes for a drink without starting a "romance" between the young 
people of the respective families. 

Discrimination on the other hand is a crime. One might make a case 
for or against segregation* If a Catholic Church in the South has one 
side reserved for Whites and the other side reserved for Negroes, one 
might argue about it. But to force the Negroes to sit in the last benches 
or to insist that they receive communion only after all white communi- 
cants had received the Body of our Lord is perhaps good Nazi custom, 
but it is certainly not Catholic usage. This is obviously discrimination 
for which we all will have some day to pay the price. May God be 
lenient to us in that hour of retribution ! 

The racial differentiation between white and black is not the only one 
in this great country. We have already made allusion to the "dirty white" 
immigration.** The Italian in the United States has frequently a definite 
feeling of inferiority, and it is not only the "wop" who feels the mild 
contempt of "Nordics," but the "Polak," the "Bohunk," the "Dago," and 



* It must be admitted that all statutes designed for segregation were discriminatory 
in their effects. 

** The National Socialists were at least liberal enough to recognize officially all "Aryans" 
(people of "German and kindred blood") as "equals." The United States in some re- 
spects is more particular in its racial legislation. The immigration laws of 1924 gave the 
North Italians (those living north of the Po River) a higher quota than the South 
Italians. This is the only case of a European country being dissected by that regulation. 
The North Italians have, naturally, more "Nordic" blood than the South Italians, their 
white skin is "cleaner" than those of the "greasy, dirty-white wops." 

An octoroon Negro in the South will similarly be considered to be a Negro, while the 
National Socialist will accept him as an Aryan. A negro mulatto and a quarteroon 
could participate in the plebiscitarian comedies of the Third Reich (as half and three- 
quarter "Aryans") but men from the same category would be to all practical purposes 
(tests!) debarred from the polk in Georgia or Mississippi. 



THE AMERICAN SCENE 239 

the "Speck" are in the same boat — not to mention the "Chinks" and 
"Japs." There is a club near Washington which has been established for 
the patronage of "Gentlemen of North European descent only" and our 
surprise increases when we see a hotel with the indelicate inscription 
"For Gentiles only." This is not due to any Nazi influence. Such hotels 
existed ages before Streicher and his Sturmer* There are thousands of 
clubs, beaches, boarding houses, hotels, and gyms where our Lord 
would not have been accepted — and all that on account of an excess 
of herdism, the deep-rooted suspicion against people who are different in 
race and character. Yet "antisemitism" is definitely a middle-class tradi- 
tion which was extremely weak prior to the Jacksonian period. 227 Jews 
were socially accepted at the beginning of the past century but "progress" 
and the Great Inundation have changed the picture. In a primitive so- 
ciety (in statu nascendi) the racial characteristics are taken as a hier- 
archy-building element because they are "obvious." A society of archaic 
structure is far too sophisticated to be influenced by racial prejudices. 
This is the reason for the lack of racial antisemitism in the social con- 
sciousness of the Mediterranean area or of England and the United 
States in their prime of independence. In order to see racial tolerance 
in the Western Hemisphere one should rather go to Brazil which pre- 
served its monarchical form of government until fifty-three years ago. 
If we are aware of the apparent fact that Christopher Columbus was a 
naturalized Spaniard of Italian birth and Jewish descent** the whole 
discriminatory attitude looks rather pathetically stupid. But young 
materialist cultures (and there is no such thing as an old materialist cul- 
ture) have the strongest and most violent prejudices or admiration for 
or against certain classes, creeds, financial groups, 228 bodily perfections 
or imperfections. I would rather be a Negro in Lisbon than in Washington, 
D. C, a beggar in Madrid than in New York, 229 a Jew in Teheran than 
in Berlin, a bourgeois in Greece than in the Soviet Union, a Protestant 
minister in eighteenth-century Austria than a Jesuit in England at the 



♦"Democratic" America produced in 1915 a highly successful film — the "Birth of 
a Nation" — in which the superiority of white people over Negroes was dealt with in a 
way which would impress any Nazi audience. A girl who was in danger of being raped 
by a Negro "defended her Aryan birthright." This film was made 18 years before the 
Reichstags fire. . . . 

In parenthesis: Professor Hooton's (Harvard) statistics show that the Negro race 
ranks lowest in rapes. Cf. E. A. Hooton, Crime and the Man, Harvard University 
Press, 1939, p. 302. 

** The circumstantial evidence published by Salvador de Madariaga in his Christopher 
Columbus proves this almost conclusively. 



240 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

same time. Primitive progressivists will always develop their peculiar 
herdist attitudes, but old cultures are skeptical and they are inclined 
not to believe in pigeonholes into which the subtlest of all things, man- 
kind, can easily be subdivided. 

(The skepticism of old cultures has naturally also its dangers. It 
deprives nations of their elan and when it encroaches upon Truths — 
not mere views — it can be devastating in the religious sphere. The 
skeptic of an old and mature culture is always a liberal in the pre- 
Manchester sense, and there is nothing more attractive than a man who 
can unite in himself both elements: a total faith and a total lack of 
prejudice: absolute Catholicity and absolute generosity.) 

There is less differentiation in the Middle West than in the North- or 
Southeast. Birth and race are less, while money is more important. The 
society there is "younger" and the development slower on account of 
the lack of "yardsticks" in the form of blue-blooded families. Money is 
power and that is what counts in a primitive society. Sixty or seventy 
years ago the six-shooter often spoke its mighty word west of the Mis- 
sissippi. Western society was then in the same stage of development 
as the Herulians of Odoaker or the Saxons under Hengist and Horsa. 
Today far-Western society is going through an early medieval period.* 
Tomorrow it may experience a period of Humanism and Renaissance. 

The cities in the Middle West look clean and prosperous, the soil is 
fertile as far as the eastern rim of the Dakotas where the dustbowl and 
erosion become a problem, the people are more naive (a medieval virtue), 
hearty, direct, friendly, and not yet engrossed in the process of building 
up a hierarchy, and the stigma of a primitive, "democratic" civilization 
— monotony — is in full bloom. This monotony, deriving from an in- 
dustrial civilization, is at the same time one of the two great handicaps 
under which the natural development of society is suffering. The other 
great identitarian factor between the Alleghenies and the Rockies is 
the almost complete absence of mountains with the exception of the 
romantic Black Hills and the Ozarks. 

If we unfold a road map of many a midwestern state (for instance, 
Iowa or Kansas) we see nothing but a uniform mass of quadrangles, the 



* There is certainly something medieval about midwestern painting which becomes 
strongly apparent in some pictures of Grant Wood. ("American Gothic") Yet Protestant 
Middle Ages are not the same thing as Catholic Middle Ages; they have an inner severity 
and seriousness which were not even shared by the most zealous Grand Inquisitors. 



THE AMERICAN SCENE 241 

counties and the roads cutting each other in right angles. Wherever the 
roads meet there is a town or agglomeration of houses which shows no 
visual difference from the one twenty miles away. The stores, chapels, 
banks, libraries, filling stations, and town houses are practically all the 
same and the uniform advertisements of oil companies, "cokes," auto- 
mobiles, and cigarettes cancel whatever variety there may have been. 
There are no peasants but only farmers, living in "fragments of mega- 
lopolis" (as Spengler expressed himself), and not in villages. They own 
the ground, yet there is a curious readiness to part with it whenever it 
is necessary or profitable. 

Farther out West one is struck by the ruins of ghost towns either of 
an agrarian or industrial nature. Dustbowls, depressions, aridity, dissica- 
tion, careless exploitation of the soil, and exhaustion of mineral wealth 
have destroyed once flourishing communities. The inordinate desire to 
get rich quickly has depleted many a national resource. The planless 
destruction of timber and forests have caused not only dust but also 
floods. Agriculture is suffering heavily and has to be aided by the state. 
The deputies and senators of agrarian districts used to demand ever in- 
creasing subventions and a planned economy is something which cannot 
be avoided any more. Economically America has come of age (every 
maturity is "tragic") and the times of an expansive economy, depriving 
Indians of their hunting grounds and other "limitless possibilities" are 
definitely over. And the sooner America realizes that, the better. The 
whole question of the "New Deal," made more serious by the problem of 
a war economy, hinges on this problem. 

We have spoken about the cultural chronology of America. Eco- 
nomically speaking one may come to the conclusion that America in 
1925 was where Europe used to be in 1880, but there is less chronological 
difference between the United States and the Continent of today. The 
social reforms of the New Deal remind strongly of Bismarck's reforms 
which were intended to take the wind out of the sails of Social Democracy 
in Germany. These reforms (Roosevelt's as well as Bismarck's) were 
timely, necessary, just, and also politically expedient. One may quarrel 
about their individual merits and the shortcomings in their application, 
but they could not be avoided. The decrease of liberties and the increase 
of centralism they entailed is deplorable, yet they are the price we pay 
for "progress." One could certainly — contrary to general views — stop 
"progress" but the thing one cannot do is to accept "progress" and to 



242 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

refuse to pay its price. This is suicidal and as catastrophic as permitting 
automobiles and to refuse, in the name of liberty, to set up traffic rules. 

In comparison to Europe, the old abundance and the old elbowroom 
of America seems to continue; automobiles were long rotting away in 
their lugubrious graveyards, automobiles which would have done serv- 
ice for at least another half decade in countries of the Old World. There 
are still butlers in America who are paid twice as high as Bulgarian 
university professors and advertising managers with salaries of European 
cabinet ministers. Yet the fact that the times of an extensive economy 
are over cannot be explained away. The country may have larger per 
capita riches than it had sixty years ago, yet the material wants have 
increased in a greater proportion and the raw materials have declined 
considerably. "Democracy" in the political sense is based on experiment- 
ing — the sometimes vague experimenting of laymen — and this is far too 
costly to countries without limitless riches. The expert and the skilled 
become more and more a necessity and the fantastic complications of 
modern technique, modern finance, modern economy, modern foreign 
policy, and modern production methods render unguided lay opinion 
more and more obsolete and hazardous for practical application. 

In previous years we have seen people trying to paint the dangers of 
a Roosevelt dictatorship and a Roosevelt fascism on the wall, and still 
today we meet individuals who call themselves "conservatives"* and 
who are in reality liberalistic capitalists in the tradition of Adam Smith, 
expecting from the New Deal as well as from the President the end of 
all liberties. Yet these steps were, as we know, unavoidable and the 
President is certainly not the type of the democratic-fascist "leader," 
but perhaps a typical aristocratic country squire of the old type who 
is intelligent enough to draw the bitter but inevitable consequences of 
modern technology. Apart from that he has that genuine aristocratic 
sense of responsibility for the little man, the worker, the employee who 
has to "be cared for."** An eminent columnist with little sympathies 
for the President remarked once scoldingly: "Mr. Roosevelt has an innate 



*The muddle in the use of political terms in America is complete. While "conserva- 
tives" are nothing but manchesterian liberals, the so-called liberals are nothing else but 
pro-Communists and even the New Deal is considered to be a "liberal" line of action 
The word federal stands naturally for "centralistic" and so forth. 

** See the cooperation of Swedish conservatives with the Socialists against the indus- 
trial liberals in social questions. The member of the squirearchy expects the manufacturer 
to treat his workers as he himself treats his farm hands, mainly if they are old and sick. 
Social Security is actually a conservative and aristocratic institution. 



THE AMERICAN SCENE 243 

hatred for wealth unless it has been inherited" — which is just another 
aspect of the aristocratic mind. 230 He has not only prevented a revolution, 
but through his moderation given a lease of life to exactly the same type 
of people — the secondary, plutocratic aristocracy — which hated him 
with a bitterness without parallel in the annals of American history.* 
We have no idea to what extent Mr. Roosevelt takes mass opinion seri- 
ously — there is no doubt that he is "demophil" — but he must be aware 
of the fact that his administration has definitely strong "bureaucratic" 
tendencies incompatible with "democracy" or even the ochlocratic trends 
of our time which stand for the rule of laymen over the experts. It is 
naturally quite a different question whether the expert advisers of the 
President are the best ones obtainable in this country and whether his 
administrators have all characteristics of an ideal officialdom. An ideal 
bureaucracy is always entirely nonochlocratic, i.e., strictly nonpolitical 
and free of party ties. And there are two more requirements for a perfect 
bureaucrat besides the aforementioned status: high intellectual as well 
as high moral standards and — last not least — generosity. 

There is naturally a genuine fear abounding lest the last token of 
active political right left to the modern slave — his right to vote — may 
also be abolished. It is a truism that every genuine officialdom is always 
out to destroy or at least to decrease the control of the nonexperts, of the 
parliaments or congresses, and to render them powerless if an opportunity 
arises.** 

The problematic nature of lay control becomes apparent if we think 



* There were, of course, a few industrialists and capitalists like Mr. Marshall Field of 
Chicago who understood the signs of the time. 

** The specifically American problem of a transition from lay to expert rule lies in 
the fact that the primary justification for bureaucratic control is in the economic field. 
It is unnecessary to emphasize that there is a majority of fields of human endeavor and 
activity where a control from above would be completely out of place and constitute an 
unnecessary increase of state powers. Yet in America economics play such an important 
role, not because there is "more" economic activity (which is about the same proportion- 
ately per cent in every country because with the exception of beggars and millionaires' 
sons everybody has to earn a livelihood) , but because Americans attach such great impor- 
tance to economic values. A bureaucratic control of economic life in a country where 
such great sentimental value is attached to the material aspects of life is — in a way — 
an attack against the central nerve of many an American, and the fear that total con- 
trol may follow is thus not entirely unfounded. Economic control in the U. S. may 
be an equivalent to religious control in India, cultural control in Germany (the greatest 
present despair of Germans), or state control of sports and games in England! A control 
of private life or a control of the diet such as this free nation tolerated for half a genera- 
tion in the form of the Volstead Act would be unthinkable in Fascist Italy. The only 
solution of the coming problem lies therefore in a metanoia, in the methodical relegation 
of business and economics to a lower sphere of human consciousness. 



244 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

about practical questions which have been put before the electorate. The 
elections of 1936, for instance, decided the future and continuation of 
the New Deal. A young historian who had majored in economics for his 
Ph.D. degree was particularly interested in this issue and embarked 
upon the venture to examine the vast project in earnest. After six weeks 
of intensive studies he saw that it would take him at least seven or 
perhaps ten months to be in the position to pass a pertinent judgment 
on this extremely complicated economic plan. There are probably not 
more than 3000 American voters (and maybe even less) who are com- 
petent critics of the New Deal, and yet we find 50,000,000 voters who 
have very definite opinions about it. If one would make an effort to find 
out how they came to their conclusions one would see that almost every- 
body judges the plan from a purely personal point of view; one man, 
for instance, will formulate his opinions according to the sales he had 
during a certain period and another one will use employment in his 
own community as a measuring rod. But no momentary or local success 
(or failure) can be taken as a basis for a fair judgment. A financial 
policy might bring enormous benefits over a period of twelve years (three 
Presidential terms) and end with total disaster, or it might work out 
the other way round.* 

The man in the street usually knows absolutely nothing about foreign 
policy, economics, civil law, strategy, naval affairs, political history, and 
federal administration, while ochlocracy at its best is an enormous ma- 
chinery of persuasion where those not well informed try to persuade with 
a confusing vocabulary other less informed voters to elect them. 231 
(Ochlocracy at its worst can be studied in Central Europe and Russia.) 
The whole thing is nothing but a lottery of opinions — of opinions based 



* It must also be borne in mind that man today is relatively less educated than his 
forefather 500 years ago; he knows proportionately less of the total existing knowledge 
and also proportionately less about the essentials of public affairs. Education could by 
no means keep up with the inventions and the growing "complicativeness" of human 
existence. Less and less people are therefore able to reason in spite of an increased 
education, and nothing remains to the masses but to judge, to go "on hunches" and 
thus to contribute to the "sensate" character of our epoch. The "total result" of our 
intensified educational efforts and the popularization of the three R's is merely a 
weakening of human memory, as modern man has everything "on file." 

"Common Man" is thus in reality entirely helpless and his public apologia by dictators 
who need his blood, by politicians who need his vote and by manufacturers and editors 
who need his pennies, lacks the ring of sincerity. Even within the ochlocratic frame- 
work he is unable to shape his own destiny. All that will not induce the Christian to 
have contempt or disdain for the Common Man, who is nonetheless our Fellow Man 
with an immortal soul. Yet this does not change the fact that there can be no 
"Century of the Common Man" but only a "Century for the Common Man." 



THE AMERICAN SCENE 245 

upon slogans, whims, hunches, dislikes, and fragmentary incoherent 
shreds of information. It is quite true that experts can also make mis- 
takes. Even doctors can make mistakes, but ailing persons who are not 
mental cases will seek the aid of a doctor and not of a tailor or cabinet- 
maker — this in spite of the fact that medical men have committed gross 
and even fatal errors. The ochlocratic spokesmen of our day, on the 
other hand, have a superstitious belief that the masses are endowed in 
political questions with an "inner light" or a special gift of the Holy 
Ghost which enables them to solve difficult expert problems. It seems 
that the sinister belief in this "Inner Light" gives the ochlocrats of our 
time the right to call themselves "enlightened persons." 

We already have mentioned the fact that the blind belief in the in- 
telligence of the man in the street, who can solve the most difficult prob- 
lems, intuitively is fundamentally Lutheran. Luther believed in the utter 
wretchedness of human beings in their moral sphere, but he thought at 
the same time that every cobbler can expound the Scriptures, which is 
full of passages over which learned theologians haggle for decades and 
even centuries. The Catholic Church, on the other side, taught the oppo- 
site doctrine ; while not despairing over human nature in its moral sense 
she always preserved a healthy skepticism about the intellectual faculties 
of the average man. 

This Protestant optimism and egalitarianism in intellectual matters 
is hostile to any form of authority or hierarchy in the field of reasoning, 
and thus we see in the earlier forms of popular government not only 
economic planning becoming impeded but every planning in general. A 
constructive foreign policy, even in a representative republic, is rather 
handicapped. One has only to remember the political testaments of kings 
and emperors who planned things two or three hundred years ahead. 
Yet in a republic or constitutional monarchy one course is followed by 
one government and another one by the next. Elective constitutions have 
an inherent dislike for a continuity of power and they rest on the as- 
sumption that four or eight years are a long time to carry out even the 
most elaborate program. Such views are far from reality unless we think 
in terms of destruction; the work of decades can naturally be destroyed 
in a few weeks time. In America we have in addition not only changing 
politicians but also changing administrations. This lack of equilibrium is 
particularly disadvantageous in foreign affairs, where "democratically" 
governed nations frequently lose the confidence of other nations because 



246 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

they cannot be trusted further than the next cabinet or the next president. 
Who are today the members of the parliaments, congresses, national 
assemblies, or popular diets the world over? Are they all still the trust- 
worthy experts, men of intuition, integrity, and knowledge they once 
used to be in the "heroic period" of parliamentarism? 232 Few people will 
doubt that the human material even of our Congress could stand some 
improvement. The ochlocratic tendencies of the past 100 years have 
wrought havoc everywhere and the present system of franchise was cer- 
tainly not conducive toward improving popular representation anywhere 
in the world. Our congressman, not less than his colleagues abroad, has 
often been elected merely on account of his popularity and the confidence 
people have in him. 233 His popularity in turn is only too often due to 
the fact that he "embodies" his constituency, that he is a personification 
of the average voter* and the natural "leader" of the district. Frequently 
he is careful not to give the impression that he is socially or intellectually 
superior to the people "back home"; the "baby kisser" likes to prove 
that he is a "fellow like you and me." And often the confidence put in 
the candidate is nothing but the conviction that he will faithfully repre- 
sent the views of his constituency. Yet a congressman who acts merely 
as a gramophone record betrays the very soul, the very essence of 
American government as conceived by the Founding Fathers. His pas- 
sive role was to receive from his constituents a delegated power, and 
right here ends his relationship to his voters; his task from now on is 
to reach decisions independently from the opinions of his voters, decisions 
in conformity to his knowledge and conscience. The Library of Congress, 
after all, has been erected in order to give the senators and representatives 
a practical help in forming definite views about the problems their country 
is faced with. We do not want to discourage voters writing to their con- 
gressmen, but they have to bear in mind that it would be more than 
unfair of them to "menace" their public servant with the refusal not 
to elect him again if he doesn't act as a messenger boy of their desires. 234 
Such an attitude is contrary to the spirit of the Constitution which wanted 
the members of the Congress to be aristoi in the best Jeffersonian sense, 
men of independent judgment, of learning and discretion. 



* There are exceptions and somebody rousing the latent "romantic" sentiments may 
be elected due to the fact that he is totally different in habitus and appearance from the 
electorate. The lion hunting, bearded Mr. Tinkham from Massachusetts is a typical 
example illustrating this exception. 



THE AMERICAN SCENE 247 

The parliamentary situation in Europe was in this respect even a 
great deal worse than in America. 235 The ochlocratic tendencies were 
much more marked and in most European countries it was unthinkable 
that a deputy (elected on a party list and not as a person) ever differed 
from the party line. American individualism at least prevented the rise 
of a strict herd obedience in party matters. The candidates for Congress 
as well as the congressmen themselves, even if they are capable of under- 
standing the underlying problems and issues of the day, are in a hope- 
less position to make them understood by the masses of voters. They 
have usually no other choice than to "boil them down" to a few simple 
catchphrases. But this process of "boiling down" means to distort the 
truth. 230 The truth, the world, nature, human affairs are usually by 
their very nature complicated. Even theological truths (contrary to Protes- 
tant conviction) are very difficult to grasp, and the individual is usually 
too lazy, uninterested, and not sufficiently educated to reason them out 
himself or to take the help of some learned and expert person. 237 The 
same indolence, indifferency, and crudity prevails in political matters. 238 

Popular representation in the United States (as anywhere else) faces 
the grave problem of quality ; quality of the voters, quality of congress- 
men and senators. There is unfortunately little doubt that the lack of 
political education (which has its limits) and that an indiscriminate 
franchise have contributed a great deal to this deficiency. We have pur- 
posely written about the indiscriminate, not general franchise. The latter 
has the advantage that it gives the individual citizen a feeling of organic 
relationship to his country (which is effected in a more prosaic way by 
the income tax). But general franchise should not mean equal franchise, 
and the two elements of knowledge and merit should definitely be taken 
into consideration. Here, quite exceptionally, we will disregard the ac- 
cepted system of the Founding Fathers who had taken from English 
usage the system of property qualifications. On account of its mammon- 
istic implications we will not consider it any further. (Income, real 
estate property, taxes, etc., fall into this category.) 

The proposal we make here is very tentative and should only serve 
as an indication as to where the solution of the problem may be. The idea 
would be to give to certain persons additional votes for each "merit" or 
"competence." These votes will be accumulated. There is little doubt that 
it would take money and trouble to verify in each case the number of 
votes an individual person is entitled to, but where the question of quality 



248 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

enters no sacrifice should be avoided. There would have to be a permanent 
commission checking up each voter's status. As basis for additional voting 
rights the following qualities could serve: 

1. Being SO years of age or over. 

2. The possession of a B.A. or B.S. 

3. The M.A. degree, all doctor's degrees (Ph.D., M.D., etc.). 

4. Active military service abroad. 

5. Invalidity as a result of such service. 

6. Being widowed by a war. 

7. Administrative offices held for over 15 years. 

8. Heads of families of 4 children or over. 

9. Priesthood, ministership, etc. 

10. Managing or directing of large enterprises. 

11. Managership of large public organizations. 

Under these circumstances a physician aged fifty, who served in the 
war and is providing for four children, would have the power to poll 
six times. The mechanical, numerical majoritism which holds such evil 
sway over parliamentarian institutions could thus be broken in order 
to preserve their existence. It would be an end of the prevalent system 
of merely "counting noses." 

Yet a reform would also be necessary on the other end of the line. 
An examination commission under the direct supervision of the Supreme 
Court should see that certain educational standards among representatives 
and senators are kept. These examinations should cover subjects like 
ethics, geography, history, constitutional history, foreign politics, eco- 
nomics, etc. This would similarly help to raise standards and to in- 
crease the respect of the citizens for their representatives. The word 
politician has today unfortunately a rather derogatory connotation, 
and each time a paper publishes a drawing symbolic of a congressman 
one will find the picture of a dirty, wicked old man with bagging trousers 
and a slimy leer. Such popular connotations destroy (in the very long 
run, it may be admitted) all confidence in representative government. 

A meticulous observer could see in the years preceding America's 
entry into this war, in certain circles in Washington, a weariness with 
uninformed lay opinion in general and with Congress in particular. This 
impatience and anger over the delays caused by fruitless talk and fili- 
bustering in Congress are mostly notable in the departments where 
educational standards are high, admission is dependent upon rigorous 
examinations, and secrecy must necessarily be strictly observed; this is 



THE AMERICAN SCENE 249 

the case in the State Department as well as in the Army and Navy. An 
almost identical situation could be found in many European states prior 
to the suppression of parliamentarian institutions (see pp. 193-194). 

Yet if the future belongs to expert rule because "progressive" ideas and 
inventions have created a permanent state of emergency the world over, 
then it is better to face the facts and to prevent the establishment of 
a party dictatorship through the cooperation of a specific political group 
which may lessen the strain of a furious and dissatisfied officialdom. // 
the administration needs more power (by no means all), then one should 
make an honest effort to build up an intellectually and morally "perfect" 
officialdom with a tradition of integrity, scholarly seriousness, and a sense 
of great responsibility toward God (and the Nation). 239 This "bureauc- 
racy" may be part of a new aristocracy of thought, faith, and taste of 
the post plutocratic period in the development of a genuine American 
hierarchy. Yet these essentials of a superior national existence cannot 
be built overnight and it may easily take a couple of generations until 
this effort yields a satisfactory result.* 

Such a process is naturally not ochlocratic. Already Charles Maurras 
has said (De Demos d Cisar, Paris, 1930, p. 35) : "Democracy is the 
rule of numbers; such a government implies equality. But organization 
implies inequality. Thus democracy and organization are mutually 
exclusive." 

In the meantime America suffers greatly from the handicap of electing 
a large part of the nonfederal officialdom by the people ; even policemen 
and judges are often elected by hobos, little businessmen, and migratory 
soda jerkers.** Under these conditions it is obvious that courts can often 
not afford to be independent. A few miles behind Richmond or Chatta- 
nooga the most ochlocratic of all judiciary systems — lynching — is still 
in force. In a strictly ochlocratic world the only logical judiciary pro- 
cedure based on general disapproval is lynching, and the democratic 
Athenians cooled their anger on unpopular fellow citizens in a bloodless 



* It is naturally only the well-established "bureaucracy" that can "afford" to be 
generous and unbureaucratic. The political appointee or the provisional official who can 
be dismissed at any time will always stick slavishly to the rules in order to avoid 
criticism or dismissal. It is the civil servant of the traditional order, holding his office 
for life, who (contrary to general assumption) can take the courage to judge cases by 
their individual merits. 

(See the inefficiency of the amateurish British bureaucracy in their dealing with the 
stranded "enemy aliens," well described by E. Lafitte in his book, The Internment of 
Aliens, London, 1941, Penguin.) 

** See the sheriff in Erskine Caldwell's masterful description of a lynching in his 
short novel Trouble in July, New York, 1940. 



250 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

lynching without photo cameras and blowtorches — through ostracism. 
Yet not less immoral than lynching is the passing of a verdict while 
listening with one ear to the Vox Populi. The judge who did not want 
to risk his popularity and his job has been immortalized by the Book 
of Books — this man, who rather obeyed the Jewish mob than his own 
conscience and who tried in vain to wash his hands in innocence, is 
Pontius Pilate. 

The great enemy of the "bureaucracy" in every capitalistic country is 
the plutocratic-capitalistic group. An incorruptible and exclusive adminis- 
tration only increases the ire and hatred of the haute finance, which has 
always shown disdain and contempt for the European bureaucracy that 
provided the nobility with new blood.* The stubborn, proud, and puritan- 
ical officialdom with "Titles without means" irritated them highly on 
account of their interference with financial activities. 

At least one must leave it to the American plutocracy that they under- 
stood very well how to impress the masses. The Little Man acquired, as 
time went on, a far greater respect and veneration for the Rockefellers, 
Carnegies, Morgans, Vanderbilts, and Mellons than his German equiva- 
lent for the Radziwills, Hohenlohes, Lowensteins, Schonburgs, Schwarzen- 
bergs — names which were frequently not known to the Man in the 
Street. 

In order to keep his prestige the plutocrat had to instill the idea into 
the people that his own values are the highest in the world, that material 
standards are of a primary importance, that nations with little enthu- 
siasm for material progress are retrograde. Once the pioneer with his cov- 
ered wagon had disappeared he was replaced by the salesman who con- 
sidered himself to be a "potential millionaire." The weakness of socialistic 
movements in America prior to 1929 is largely due to the fact that people 
preferred the hope for a million to the certainty of thirty dollars a week. 
Like the soldier of the Napoleonic period with the proverbial baton in 
the knapsack, so the ambitious young American saw himself prophetically 
with all the glory of a million-dollar banking account.** Only after the 



* If we believe that it is just to inherit material goods from our parents one has to 
consider it a crying injustice that there are no hereditary titles in the United States. The 
millionaire, who made riches unscrupulously, can leave a fortune to his son. Yet none 
of the honors of great administrators, judges, scientists, artists, or soldiers are bestowed 
upon their offsprings. 

** "To abolish millionaires would have been to dash one's own hopes." George 
Santayana, Character and Opinion in the United States, New York, 1920, p. 198. 



THE AMERICAN SCENE 251 

great crash do we see the desire for more security gaining momentum. 

In order to stimulate emulation and "healthy ambition" we see the 
plutocrats finally unfolding their private lives to the public. Success 
became material success and was called euphemistically "making good." 
The level of higher education became constantly lower and the "prac- 
tical" became the main object of studies. The high cultural level of 1800 
was completely abandoned. The mountains of the old American British 
tradition were with difficulty saved from being submerged in the deluge 
of mass immigration. The pioneering period was followed by an effort 
of social stratification and integration through money. The railroads fol- 
lowed the covered wagons. Now money as a crude differentiating power 
is slowly reaching its end. More lasting values will take its place. Yet 
the ochlocratic worship of numbers and quantities has caused in the 
meantime untold damage. 240 

It is a commonplace that the great values of life cannot be expressed in 
numbers and statistics, and this is partly the reason why the ideas of 
quality and permanence have been so neglected in the period of the Great 
American Impasse. Neither the holiness of a Santa Teresa, nor the hero- 
ism of Tone, nor yet the profundity of theological truth can be expressed 
in numbers. But in the technicized world numbers become involved with 
human or inhuman activities of every kind, which find their expression 
in statistical recording. The various denominations vie in their yearly 
revenues from whist drives and bingo parties; games are expressed in 
numbers which are broadcasted all over the country; human beings are 
said to be "worth" so and so many thousand dollars a year ; Bridge has 
been evolved into a system of mathematical probabilities (Culbertson) ; 
houses are evaluated by their rooms and floors, and public squares by 
their equivalent in money. (For instance, the "Ten Million Dollar Plaza" 
in Washington, D. C, and the Million Dollar Highway in Colorado.) The 
infantile British joy in general competition, a Hobbesian bellum omnium 
contra omnes, has created this crazy idea of an endless humming and 
buzzing competition without repose.* 

Everything must be measured and compared ; the stop watch and the 
yardstick celebrate their omnipresence in horseraces, auto races, tree 
sitting, jumping, hurdle races, and motorboat races. All these victories 
and defeats can be measured. Yet the desperate desire for new meas- 
urable and "comparable" victories engenders such odd competitive efforts 



♦The English public schools are thoroughly imbued with the spirit of competition. 
They could hardly be visualized without the elements of cooperation and team-spirit. 



252 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

as, for instance, the dancing marathons, kissing marathons, speaking mar- 
athons. America, England, and even Germany between the two revolutions, 
were full of people who established new records by hopping on one leg 
around a city, eating cabbage for ten successive years' or covering the 
walls of a house with cigar bands. 2 * 1 The deeper reason for this mania is 
not only to be found in the worship of numbers but also in the morbid 
desire for publicity (anthropocentrical neighborly recognition) and, what 
is even more important, the subconscious wish to see new records estab- 
lished because the breaking of old records seems to justify the fairy tale 
of "Progress." 

If somebody drives 311 miles an hour (instead of 309) in a one-man 
car which consumes one gallon for every two miles on an artificial drive- 
way then he or she has furthered the sacred cause of "progress." Even 
human sacrifices are made to placate the sinister god of progress. Every 
year about 40,000 people are squashed to death on the American high- 
ways with the help of explosive motors. If somebody would start a sect 
which would immolate every year about 40,000 innocent people to a god 
named Progressilopochtli or if a medicine were to be sold which an- 
nually cures the headache of about 20,000,000 people but kills off forty 
thousand men, women, and children, the police would definitely step in 
and the head of the sect or the manufacturer of the medicine would be 
confined in a prison or a psychopathic ward. Yet with our present state 
of mind we rather advocate the psychopathic ward for the man who 
would plead for the abolition of automobiles. 

Things which are "measurable" are popular in a technical civilization 
because they can be "judged" by the masses who are thankful for the 
criterion of numbers. The circenses of today are based on "scorings." 
One could, if one wanted to, compare universities by taking their scorings 
at spelling bees or football teams as a basis for comparison. Authors may 
thus be compared by their literary output, the number of pages they have 
written or the reprintings of their books. But could one arrange a 
"match" between two savants ? Hardly ! It certainly would be amusing to 
see a race for holiness between two prospective saints. And painters? 
Pictures may be measured by square inches and even poems by yards. 242 
All this cannot be proposed in earnest and the fact remains that spiritual 
and intellectual values cannot be measured as quantities. They cannot 
be expressed in numerals as, for instance, the sex appeal of the film stars, 
which is frequently evaluated by its financial effect on the box office. 



THE AMERICAN SCENE 253 

The worship of numbers, quantity, and size has also wrought havoc 
wherever it found little opposition. Education is, after all, something 
thoroughly "aristocratic" in the intellectual sense. Already the Ancients 
were aware of the fact that there are different degrees of knowledge, but 
ochlocracy spread the conviction that everybody with the proper educa- 
tional facilities is able to learn everything. The very idea of genius or 
inborn talents as disequalizing factors must be repulsive to people who 
not only believe that we are (theologically speaking) created as equals 
but that we also remain equals all through our lifetime. There naturally 
are a fair number of scholars and educators who have protested des- 
perately against the low standards in American higher education as well 
as against the view that a true education should teach "how to make a 
living" instead of helping the student to solve his problem "how to live" 
by giving him the philosophical and cultural elements for a cultured 
existence. 

President Robert Hutchins of the University of Chicago, who advo- 
cates the study of theology and a preponderance of the liberal arts in the 
curriculum of colleges and universities, has been promptly branded a 
"Fascist," the label which "progressive" educators stick indiscriminately 
on people they instinctively dislike. As if Fascism would prefer an erudi- 
tion in metaphysics and the litterae humaniores to military drill and 
engineering ! * 

The so-called high schools in the United States have the level of better 
French elementary schools and the students normally enter college or 
university with a rudimentary knowledge of spelling but often also with 
an inordinate desire to play football and to advance their social status 
(which fact incidentally proves that the general evaluation of equality is 
still fictional). The intellectual maturity of deserving individuals as well 
as of the whole nation is thus impeded in the most phantastic way. It is 
true that a few universities maintain high standards, but these (in imita- 
tion of the British system) are not "democratic" institutions, and the 
number of scholarships in these private enterprises is naturally limited. 
America, from a social point of view, is decidedly far less of a "democ- 
racy" than France, Germany, Spain, or Scandinavia. But intellectually — 
in order to assure a "higher" education for the greatest number — the 
ochlocratic ideas have reaped an almost total victory, and most universi- 



* Sinclair Lewis described with more insight than Mr. Hutchins' opponents the anti- 
humanistic tendency in Fascism in his It Can't Happen Here, New York, 1935, 
pp. 250-252. 



254 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

ties have usually not even the level of French lycies or German Gym- 
nasien. The financial position of professors is frequently that of a fore- 
man in an average factory or a policeman in a larger city. Neither is the 
professor's social position an enviable one and some may remember that 
this title had once been given to men with long hair who played the 
piano in the houses of ill fame of booming frontier towns out West. 

Such an atttitude is far from being "American" in a traditional sense ; 
it is rather the result of the immigrant's contempt for the liberal arts 
which do not show a handsome profit expressed in dollars and cents. The 
general prosperity of the nineteenth and early twentieth century have 
given a certain impetus to this materialistic attitude which was never 
shared by the best Americans. (A similar money rush could be observed 
in Russia from 1890 to 1914.)* Today we have to face the possibility — 
less so than before 1929 — that a man lecturing on window dressing is 
more respected than a man lecturing on philosophy or theology, which 
will not aid "progress."** Things which are apt to be understood only by a 
minority do not promote sales and therefore would possibly be branded 
by the mob as "stuffed shirt" articles. Yet on the other side, paradoxically 
enough, there is a great hunger for knowledge and education which has 
never been properly channeled. 

Others again see in the university professor some sort of Peter Pan 
who never grows up; he is nothing else but a faithful student who has 
(neither the "guts" nor the energy to leave the Alma Mater and so, 
instead of selling automobiles or insurance, he remains within the walls 
of the campus undergoing later a slow metamorphosis into an M.A., a 
Ph.D., an instructor, and so forth. 

The Presidents of American Universities are to all practical purposes 



* It must be kept in mind that no country in the world was so thoroughly permeated 
with the spirit of the nineteenth century (1814-1914) as the United States — with the 
possible exception of Australia and New Zealand. Only a geographical fragment of the 
present U. S. lived a political and cultural existence in the eighteenth century and the 
imprint the nineteenth century left on the United States was therefore largely made on 
a blank. The culture of the individual centuries though divided in time has to share a 
common space in Europe and their marks can only be found in a maze of other phe- 
nomena. America on the other hand merely spent her babyhood in the eighteenth cen- 
tury; childhood and adolescence are to be found in the nineteenth century which, for 
her, is still not terminated. 

** Jacques Maritain almost created a riot at the "Conference on Science, Philosophy 
and Religion" in autumn 1940 when he read a paper which pleaded for a hierarchy of 
knowledge placing theology at the top and the sciences at the bottom, thus leaving to 
philosophy an intermediary position. (An even greater furor was created by a paper read 
by Professor Mortimer Adler who charged the materialist professors with being greater 
enemies of civilization than Hitler.) 



THE AMERICAN SCENE 255 

absolute monarchs. European Universities on the other hand are re- 
publics. An exception is the University of Virginia which has been 
modeled after a European pattern. The American professor — except for 
the moral influence of his professional Association, after he has reached 
a certain rank — can be dismissed on short notice and is far from enjoy- 
ing the security of a European professor in a nonfascist state, who 
always had the tenure of an American Judge of the Supreme Court. 
Needless to say that there is no academic freedom in the classic sense. 
Thus our professor is often a little respected member of the community 
and he usually knows it. In many cases the Presidents are not much 
better off either. He, the lord over the professors, trembles before the 
board of trustees made up often of smug businessmen who could hardly 
write a letter without looking up most expressions in a dictionary.* But 
he may be semi-illiterate himself and his appointment (as in the State 
Universities) may have been made for political reasons. Rarely is he a 
scholar himself.** 

The ochlocratic statistician with his numeralist views upon vital 
matters likes to speak about countries in terms of "success" or "failures," 
always taking these terms in a material sense. There is no doubt that the 
Founding Fathers intended the United States to be primarily a human 
and only secondarily a material success. The Soviet Union may be a 
material success (though the readers of Manya Gordon's book*** will 
doubt it very much), but it certainly is not humanly a success. The 
American educational system is frequently defended by the statement 
that it is "successful" because it was instrumental in making of the 
United States a "success." 

There is one more notion which ought to be dispelled and that is the 
opinion that only "progressive" countries with popular representations 
are able to produce great material achievements. The United States is 
fortunate in being an extremely large country, possessing great mineral 



* A State University had a football coach who "quite naturally" had a salary far 
superior to that of an ordinary professor. This coach wanted a higher salary. He was 
told that the budget would not permit it. He handed in his resignation and the students 
demonstrated. The board of trustees convened and found that the budget really did not 
permit such an increase in salary. But they found a solution in firing the president and 
appointing the football coach in his place and meeting his demands by adding up both 
salaries. 

** The strongest condemnation of the American Universities can be found in Abraham 
Flexner's Universities in America, England and Germany, New York, 1930. 

*** Workers Before and After Lenin, New York, 1940. 



256 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

wealth and one hundred and thirty-five million customers. Europe with- 
out interstate borders and a population of five hundred millions could 
easily produce automobiles twice as cheap as America. In order to draw 
a just comparison between the "efficiency" of the two continents one 
would have to fill a similar space with an identical amount of people and 
to surround the American equivalent with an unsurmountable custom 
barrier. One ought to pour, for instance, the Austrian population into 
Maine, i.e., seven million people into that one North Atlantic state which 
at present harbors only eight hundred thousand. Even though these 
seven million were to be sturdy straphangers from New York I doubt 
whether they would not starve the first winter and die during the second. 
The odds and handicaps in Europe are almost unbelievable. Unsuccessful 
experiments have the most dire consequences. It is this very danger of 
irresponsible experimenting (by the lay masses) which among other 
reasons finally led to the end of representative government in Europe. 



V 

THE AMERICAN TRAGEDY 



"A nation is not what it considers itself to be in time but 

what God thinks about it in eternity." — Vladimir Soloviev, 

cited by E. Tavernier in the preface to Trots Entretiens, 

Paris, 1916. 

In necessary things, unity; in doubtful things, liberty; in all things, 
charity (in necessariis unit as, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas), is a 
wonderful program, which should characterize all Christian cultures at 
all times. The Middle Ages were largely imbued with this spirit. The 
necessary element of unity was the Church and her dogmas. If a medieval 
prince gave a feast, he would have been extremely shocked to find that 
one of his guests did not believe in God or considered the crucifixion a 
myth. As regards the dress of his guests he would permit a far-reaching 
latitude and he would indeed be highly astonished if all his male friends 
would wear identical garments. Today we consider it quite natural that 
our left-hand neighbor at a banquet is an atheist, our host a heretic, 
and our right-hand neighbor an agnostic. Emily Post would probably 
severely censure anybody who would take exception to the religious views 
of his hosts or guests. It would be "tactless" and demonstrate a lack of 
good breeding. Yet it would be an even greater crime to appear at a 
formal dinner in sports clothes and not to don the rigorously prescribed 
uniforms: tuxedo or tails. So we have today disunity in the necessary 
things and uniformity in the "doubtful things," not to speak of charity 
which has been replaced by ambition. 

In order to illustrate the situation even more accurately one might 
take the example of a tree with roots hanging in the air and the branches 
fixed individually on iron poles. The situation in ancient Rome and in 

257 



258 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

the United States have certain parallels when we remember that both 
countries served as meeting places for the most different religions. The 
Roman chaos of Isis, Mithras, Jahveh, Zeus, Kybele, Jupiter, and Saturn 
has been matched by Mary Eddy-Baker, Joseph Smith, Aimee S. Mac- 
pherson, and others. This variety of forms has caused religion to be held 
as something merely relative (an opinion not a truth). People who dog- 
matize furiously about the President, the gold reserves of Fort Knox, and 
the New Deal become suddenly vague, "broad minded," and uncertain if 
they talk about religion. They look to the most abstruse laymen for 
"orientation," and nowhere is the distrust for the expert greater than 
in this domain.* Astronomers, mathematicians, biologists, electrical engi- 
neers, and movie stars expound publicly their views about God, eternity, 
grace, and original sin, whereas nobody would dream of asking arch- 
bishops or professors of divinity about their opinions on atom smashing, 
protoplasm, or short waves. 

Catholicism fits very badly into this "pantheon," it fits into it only as 
ancient Christianity did into the multiform, liberal religious world of 
the first century a.d. Christendom was then considered to be an unsporting, 
disagreeable, exclusive, and totalitarian low-class sect, which "didn't play 
the game." Catholicism in the United States is frequently looked upon 
with similar feelings. One will find Unitarians in America who invite 
Episcopalian ministers to preach in their churches and — what is less 
surprising — Jewish rabbis delivering their sermons in Presbyterian 
houses of worship. This concessionalism and interdenominationalism leads 
to that famous nonsectarian attitude that culminates in the saying: 
"There's truth in every religion," which is precisely the gist of the 
parable of the ring in Boccaccio's Decameron. The true early Christians 
never minded being used as living torches or as crocodile fodder. Sectar- 
ians now too often forget the tradition of these heroic martyrs, and the 
intolerance even of their sectarian fathers. One finds Presbyterian pastors 
using "Luther" as their Christian name and Lutherans who are called 
"Calvin," oblivious of all the abysmal antagonism between the ex-monk 
and the dictator of Geneva, who founded their respective religions. One 
also wonders whether the rabbis preaching in Lutheran Churches know 
anything about Luther's contempt and hatred for their race and faith. 



♦It is significant that religion and politics are the two domains where modern man 
manifests such a deep conviction in lay intuition. "Democracy" has indeed for the 
secularized American the same importance in these instances, as National Socialism for 
the secularized German, or Communism for the irreligious Russian. 



THE AMERICAN TRAGEDY 259 

One at least can imagine how the refusal of Catholics to "play the game" 
adds to their unpopularity. 

But apart from their unpopularity, they are in an extremely difficult 
and delicate position. This in spite of the fact that with their twenty- 
three million souls they are the largest religious community in the 
country.* 

The relationship between the Catholic Church and the state in the 
United States of America is characterized by the absolute acceptance of 
the separation of these two domains by the Church as an "ideal condition" 
for all such countries. Catholics of the United States are entirely sincere 
in their acceptance of this allegedly "democratic" tenet of faith. 243 The 
result, however, of noncooperation in the educational domain (the public 
schools themselves give no instruction in the Catholic or any other re- 
ligion) has caused the Church the loss of millions and millions of souls. 
There ought to be somewhere around thirty-five million Catholics in the 
states, but there are actually only twenty-three, and this leakage con- 
tinues. In Central Europe children of religiously indifferent parents re- 
ceived, twice a week, from the age of six to the age of eighteen, com- 
pulsory, denominational religious instruction.** But the National Social- 
ists in their great admiration for secular tendencies have done their best 
to abolish all religious instruction of the young. The continuous leakage 
in the United States is going to render the percentage of Catholics smaller 
and smaller. Today the proportion is one to six, but tomorrow it may be 
one to seven or one to eight. Catholics live predominantly in the large 
cities of the Northeast, and though they try heroically to keep the num- 
ber of their children from declining, they have great difficulties in com- 
peting with the high birth rate of the rural, Protestant South. The Cath- 
olic rural movement is therefore of cardinal importance.*** 



* There are twenty -three million Catholics in the United States. The sum total of 
people claiming church membership is sixty-four millions. Fifty-two per cent of the 
population of the United States profess no established religion. Other estimates speak of 
forty-two million "potential" Catholics. It is held that the official Catholic census can 
take no adequate account of the "floating" and nondue-paying Catholic population which 
would vastly increase the figures. 

** This was usually done by a temporary division of the classes in three groups — 
Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. This religious instruction was not given by the regular 
teacher but by priests, ministers, or rabbis who drew a salary from the state. 

*** Theodore Maynard writes in his book The Story of American Catholicism (New 
York: Macmillan, 1941), about the menace of the city birth rate in relation to American 
Catholicism. Reprinted in Vol. XXXIV, No. 23 of Commonweal under the title "The 
Lost Land." 



260 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

Another obstacle under the present inevitable arrangement of separa- 
tion of Church and state lies in the frequent preoccupation of priests 
with the raising and administration of money and funds. The whole 
European clergy, Catholics as well as Protestants, received a salary 
from the state* (which, after all, should be nothing else than the organ- 
ized community). Bishops in the United States necessarily have to spend 
much time with the problems of financial administration, and the refusal 
of the states to subsidize Catholic schools (as even Anglican England 
does it) adds not only a great financial burden to the expenses of the 
Catholics, who have to pay taxes for the state schools as well, but in- 
creases the material responsibilities of the Church. The generosity of 
American Catholics is therefore something really impressive and almost 
without parallel in the annals of the Church. Their share in the Peter's 
Pence and in the upkeep of the Catholic missions is more than praise- 
worthy. And yet it must be emphasized that the separation of Church 
and state does not lie in the tradition of Catholicism which is con- 
cerned with a Catholic culture. The express condemnation of the abstract 
principle by Pope Pius IX is understood to have no application in coun- 
tries like England and the United States. In the latter instance the quota 
regulations of 1924 have throttled Catholic immigration almost com- 
pletely ; the liberal Irish quota is the exception to the rule. 244 

A serious handicap in spreading the faith in the United States (which 
can be effected only through a very considerable increase in conversions) 
is the uneasiness and crisis in the intellectual sphere of American Catholi- 
cism. The Church in the United States is certainly not sterile in com- 
parison with other religious communities and it can be said without ex- 
aggeration that her intellectual and artistic activities almost double those 
of all other "denominations" taken together. We can only speak of a 
crisis (which is no new phenomenon) if we think in proportional ratios 
and compare the artistic intellectual achievement of Catholic America 
with that of the materialist intellectuals on one side and the British 
Catholics on the other. The proportion of Catholics in the United States 
of America compared with that in Britain is numerically almost ten to 
one, yet if one compares the splendid list of British Catholic thinkers 
and artists with their American equivalents then the situation looks quite 
different. The reasons to be assigned for this condition are many; one 



* With the exception of the Soviet Union and the Third French Republic. 



THE AMERICAN TRAGEDY 261 

might blame Jansenistic Puritanical 245 trends which have found their 
way from St. Sulpice to Ireland and from there to the United States. 
But the class structure of American Catholicism, the lack of a historical 
background in the Northeast, the "racial" diversity and general ani- 
mosity, the tradition of the Ku Klux Klan and the Know-Nothings, even 
a certain feeling of social inferiority have attributed to the present situa- 
tion which is visibly improving. The lack of an important Catholic in- 
tellectual forum may have led to the loss of many well-known Catholic 
thinkers and writers (men like Ernest Hemingway, Dos Passos, James 
T. Farrel, Will Durant)* who had to begin under such conditions, and 
thus were enticed by the superficial brilliancy of the secular "creeds." 

The American Catholic, as a member of a minority, distinguishes 
himself by very few external traits from his fellow Protestant or fellow 
pagan — except by eating fish on Friday and his membership in the 
Knights of Columbus or other Catholic societies. He tries to keep among 
his coreligionists, and while he is proud of his religion there is sometimes, 
in spite of great zeal and uprightness, a certain despondency, timidity, and 
superabundance of prudence. 246 He positively suffers (even if subcon- 
sciously) from the fact that he had nowhere, with the exception of Mary- 
land and a few districts in the Southwest, a historic upper class, and 
that he further lives within the cities thus equally lacking tradition and 
organic connection with the soil. In a country of social registers and a 
still potent aristocratic and hierarchic tradition, this amounts to a con- 
siderable handicap. England, with her numerous Catholic old English 
families, a Catholic sector of the aristocracy and numerous converts in 
the intellectual world, is in a far more advantageous situation. 247 And 
there are in addition the numerous witnesses of pre-reformation England 
in stone and brick, the castles and cathedrals of Catholic Britain which 
are only for the time being in Protestant hands. 

It is therefore difficult and unjust to blame American Catholicism for 
not having produced an "independent" Catholic type. But if the Catholic 
is just a "plain American," a "fellow like you and me" or a "regular 
guy," then we do not deem the situation satisfactory. The "average 
American" is either a Catholic type or he is not. If he is not, then the 
Catholic has to decide whether he wants to represent the type of his 
Church or the (temporary) ideal of the masses. He cannot compromise 



* The Irish list would include such names as Liam O'Flaherty, James Joyce, Francis 
Hackett, and Sean O'Faolain. 



262 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

on that provided he is aware of the existence of such an alternative 
(which he very seldom is).* 

Yet if the dynamic American Catholic is aware of this issue then he 
must face another decision, another alternative — either he must go into 
some sort of Catholic ghetto (which still exists intellectually and socially 
to a certain extent) or go out and conquer the country for Christ. One 
has only to see St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York standing on a 
summer afternoon in the very shadow of the steel and concrete masses 
of Rockefeller Center to understand the essence of the Catholic ghetto 
more readily. The paradoxical side of that problem is that there are 
so many Catholics in that ghetto without having decided to be culturally 
Catholics. These Catholics, living strictly after the precepts of their 
religion, will nevertheless be helpless victims of "progress" and the in- 
dustrial civilization with its identitarian tendencies. It may be exactly 
their fear of total assimilation which drives them into a state of separa- 
tion and seclusion.** But this again does not cancel the tendency to be 
a "regular guy" and we see the Catholic striving to be more American 
than the non-Catholic American (taking the word American in its con- 
torted, late nineteenth-century sense). And here we must not forget that 
mimicry is always a sign of weakness and defense. Defense is the char- 
acteristic of the Church in America in spite of her striving often to 
take the initiative and the offensive. It is also mimicry and the spirit of 
self-defense which led indirectly to the establishment of the Bellarmine 
legend and the emphasis the American Catholic puts on his loyalty to 
un-American democracy.*** Here and there the American Catholic's 
"clericalism," a timid reliance on priestly guidance in purely worldly 
matters, breaks through (the lack of an aristocracy leaves the clergy 
supreme) with the danger of giving the impression for a Jansenist puri- 
tanism. In this particular guise his "attraction" and magnetism is almost 



* Theodore Roosevelt came out brutally against the Catholics when he said: "The 
Catholic Church is in no way suited to this country and can never have any permanent 
growth except through immigration, for its thought is Latin and entirely at variance 
with the dominant thought of our country and civilization." A good half of these state- 
ments are at variance with truth, yet they express a real sentiment and like all half- 
truths they have a kernel of truth. The Catholics will have to change America. Omnia 
restaurare in Christo, is a program for the world which excludes neither the City of 
Rome nor the United States. 

**See the estimate of Fr. Victor Dillard, S.J., regarding the Ghetto Catholic in his 
article in Etudes, April, 1940. 

*** The reader is reminded again that we distinguish (following strictly Platonic and 
Thomistic principles) between a republic, a legitimate form of government, and democ- 
racy, its corrupted form. 



THE AMERICAN TRAGEDY 263 

zero. To expand, the Church in America needs men of the faith who are 
also men of the world. 

Catholic education in the United States is a problem in itself. The 
grade schools and the high schools have a level not considerably higher 
than the non-Catholic schools. Yet the colleges and universities — affected 
by the spirit of "intellectual democracy" — are in their scholastic attain- 
ments not always as conspicuous as they should be. But Catholic in- 
stitutions of higher learning have a very special task, i.e., to provide 
America in general and the Catholics in particular with something new ; 
they have to create a Catholic elite. While the birth rate remains the 
Catholic problem of quantity, the elite remains the Catholic problem of 
quality. The future of Catholicism in the United States rests on these 
two pillars. 

But if the intellectual standards in colleges and universities were every- 
where to be raised as high as responsible Catholics would like to have 
it, a large exodus of the students to the non-Catholic state universities, 
where they receive an education on the money of the taxpayers, is to be 
dreaded, seriously imperiling an educational system which has few en- 
dowments and is financially based upon tuition fees paid by the stu- 
dents.* Thus the competition of the secular institutions of higher 
learning and the lack of financial resources make the creation of a large 
Catholic intellectual aristocracy almost impossible. Other ways and 
means must be found to carry out this necessary task, and such first- 
rate institutions as, for instance, the Pontifical Institute of Medieval 
Studies in Toronto seem to promise a brighter future. 

Another problematic chapter of American Catholicism is its political 
affiliation with political trends popularly (but not accurately) called 
"democracy." Responsible Catholics (ecclesiastics and laymen alike) have 
by their utterances and writings created the impression that the cause 
of the Church and the cause of world "democracy" is one and the same. 
The most desperate efforts have been made to proclaim St. Thomas 
Aquinas, Bellarmine, and Suarez as "early democrats," while the Found- 
ing Fathers, as we know, were opposed to ochlocracy. The skeptical atti- 
tude of the Church toward political mass movements in the past cen- 
turies is little mentioned in Catholic schools, and the students seldom 



* Even in spite of tuitions the self-sacrifice of orders (Jesuits, Christian Brothers, etc.) 
is necessary to keep Catholic education going. 



264 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

become aware of the fact that the Church has a basically hostile and 
negative attitude toward the very spirit of our time (and rightly so). 
There is little emphasis given to the Syllabus of Pope Pius IX which 
makes excellent reading (and sense). Today more than ever before it is 
a timely document. There are in America few Catholics who would dare 
to read aloud (in mixed society) such a condemned statement as the 
one contained in the Syllabus taken from the Allocution Iamdudum 
cernimus (March 18, 1861): 

The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to 
terms with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization.* 

And there is indeed little probability that Pius IX would take a more 
conciliatory attitude toward "modern civilization" in our present year. 

A Catholic may certainly be a convinced political "democrat," i.e., a 
believer in popular representation. Such a conviction is not incompatible 
with Catholic dogma. This question moves clearly on the plane where 
In dubiis libertas is written in flaming words. But it is highly doubtful 
whether "democracy," with its modern ochlocratic trends, agrees with 
the parfum of the Church which is monarchical, patriarchal, and "aristo- 
cratic" (in the qualitative sense). Catholic democratic parties could only 
be found in such countries where Catholics were a not fully respected 
minority — as, for instance, in the Second Reich. But hardly had the 
Center Party declared itself for "democratic" institutions (and the repub- 
lican form of government) when the Bavarian deputies seceded from the 
party. The Catholics in Bavaria were a majority and thus they did not 
care for an egalitarian attitude so significant for the "underdog." The 
whole rapprochement between the Church and popular governments with 
liberal principles dates only from the rise of superdemocracies, which 
proved to be even greater evils than their milder forerunners. Choosing 
between the ancien regime** and the Gironde, the Church would always 
have sided with the ancien rdgime; in the choice between Gironde and 
the terror regime of Robespierre, the Church would incline toward the 
Gironde. This is not the indication of a wavering, unprincipled attitude 



* The sense in which the propositions in the Syllabus are condemned can be learned 
only by searching the documents from which they have singly been taken. No Catholic 
should disdain the accumulated wisdom of 2000 years. "Liberalism" is here clearly the 
continental, Rousseauan brand, not the Anglo-American tradition in the sense in which 
it is employed, for instance, by Christopher Dawson. 

** The Church would naturally prefer the France of St. Louis to the superficial and 
frivolous ancien rigime. 



THE AMERICAN TRAGEDY 265 

but the Church has to strive to establish the best possible conditions for 
a Catholic life and a Catholic existence. Said Pope Pius XI, "In order 
to save the souls of our children We would not hesitate to negotiate with 
the devil in person." 

Yet there is definitely the tendency in this country to identify 
Catholicism with popular representation and one must add that this 
attitude is represented sometimes by the best heads of the Church in 
America. There is Dr. Mortimer Adler who attempts to prove (not ex- 
clusively on Thomist grounds) that "democracy" is not only the best 
form of government but the only just one; there is a book called God 
and Democracy, written by a fine mind ; and there are many numerous 
other attempts to come to conclusions which are dangerously close to 
an anathematization of all nondemocratic thought. Yet the most powerful 
argument against "democracy," i.e., its lack of the element of love, often 
causes nothing but endless astonishment, because the line of argument 
of these Catholic democratists is purely intellectual-rational.* If one 
mentions to them Catholic thinkers of the first order who objected to 
ochlocracy, they are frequently labeled as "victims of the prejudices of 
their time," which argument may turn out to be a boomerang. 

This lack of respect for the postulate of liberty in doubtful things (In 
dubiis libertas) is similarly felt in the domain of theological thought. 
Thomism, in the American branch of the Catholic Church, has an almost 
absolute monopoly. St. Thomas is cited as practically an infallible 
authority and sometimes even a Jesuit may become apologetic when the 
name of Molina is mentioned. The necessity for unity is overstressed ; a 
typical characteristic of every religious group in the diaspora. The fear 
is that the hostile majority may interpret as disloyalty friendly criticism 
within the Church. Yet it is difficult to see how these shortcomings 
can be eliminated unless the Church is successful in achieving three 
tasks: the formation of a Catholic culture at least in certain parts of 
the United States, the creation of an equivalent to a Catholic "Aristoc- 
racy," and the conquest of the intellectual key positions. Unless these 
goals are reached the Church will necessarily have to continue to remain 
in the "ghetto," and in spite of the fact that she alone possesses the full 
truth it will be her fate to be a "sect among sects." 

Catholics must not forget that their religion is far too great to be 
identified with any political trend, party, or ideology. (This does not 



* The nonrational values play a very small part (if any) in Thomist philosophy. 



266 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

hold in the negative sense as ideologies contradicting tenets of faith or 
morals are incompatible with the Church and must clearly be combated.) 
A Catholic supporter of the ideals of hereditary monarchy should sim- 
ilarly object to having "God and Monarchy" named in the same breath. 
Political parties and ideas come and go. Nations, governments, nay, even 
constitutions,* rise, decline, and perish. Only the Church remains. Stat 
crux dum volvitur orbis. The promise, "I will remain with you until the 
end of the world," had been given to us by Jesus Christ and not by 
Thomas Paine or Robespierre. 

We have dealt with the position of Catholicism in the United States 
more thoroughly than with the other "denominations" for two reasons: 
Catholicism is first of all the only important bridge between Europe and 
the United States, and, secondly, it stands side by side with the old 
American Whiggish tradition, the great positive spiritual-intellectual 
element in the American framework. Strange as it must sound, it is 
also the only uniting faith of the religiously disunited states, connecting 
the missions of the Southwest with the French-Canadian immigrants in 
Vermont and Maine, the Boston Irish with the settlers of Maryland, 
the Spaniards of Tampa with the Poles of Chicago, the Croats of Mon- 
tana with the French of New Orleans, the Magyars of Cleveland with 
the Portuguese of Rhode Island and California. No other single religion 
in the states has such a racial and geographical record. There is also 
much less Anglo-Catholicism (or rather its equivalent) in the United 
States than in Britain. The Episcopalians are officially "Protestant" and 
many of them are tainted with modernism of the most outspoken type. 
The other religious communities, as, for instance, the Baptists, Metho- 
dists, and Presbyterians, show themselves preoccupied with material 
problems which seem to expose them dangerously to the magnetism of 
communism. The desire to be "progressive" engendered in them a fatal 
nostalgia for the message of the Kremlin, and the temptation to adulate 
communism is especially strong in the "liberal" Protestant groups. 248 
During the Spanish Civil War Protestant public opinion** was entirely in 
favor of the Communists, Anarchists, and "Democrats" who had com- 



* Even Jefferson was a bitter enemy of the idea of constitutional immutability. 

** It will take a long time until the Anti-Catholics in this country will drop the charge 
against Catholicism that it is "Fascist." This illusion is based on the usual ignorance 
concerning Catholicism as well as Fascism. The view that Catholicism is terroristic and 
based on violence while Protestantism is liberal, enlightened, and mild — is almost gen- 
eral. Read in this connection Giuseppe Gangale Rivoluzione Protestante (Torino, 192S). 
The thesis of this book is Protestant, Fascist, and Anti-Catholic to the core. 



THE AMERICAN TRAGEDY 267 

mitted delirious atrocities against lay people, priests, and nuns. On the 
other hand we find a most phantastic dabbling of laymen in the domain 
of theological knowledge and speculation and the efforts to reconcile 
the modern world with integral Christianity resulting frequently in the 
most amusing struggles. 249 

The great crisis of Protestantism in the Anglo-Saxon as well as in the 
Scandinavian world is intrinsically connected with the breakdown and 
shrinkage of the average man's power of imagination ; this is after all the 
loss of a faculty which is as serious as the loss of a limb or sense, or 
perhaps even more so. One of the most important differences between 
"modern" society and preindustrial society consists largely in the great 
antithesis between phantasism and realism, between man and machine. 
All fictional heroes in Europe, from Parzifal and Don Quixote to Peer 
Gynt and Dostoyevsky's "Idiot," are fantasist dreamers.* The "tradi- 
tional" European, and especially the nonprogressive easterner and south- 
erner, has almost always an "inner realm" of which he is king.** This is 
the reason why he does not feel the grim realities so keenly (as we out- 
siders imagine he does) and manages to retire into his realm of dreams 
like a tortoise into her shell. The total materialists (who are called 
"realists" without justification because their nonrecognition of meta- 
physics as well as lack of imagination makes them anything else but 
realists in a higher sense) have always led uncomfortable and drab lives, 
hurting themselves continuously, while the dreamer might live in all 
luxury among the creations of his phantasy. The dreamer and fantasist 
is in a way invincible while the "realistic" materialist is exposed to 
danger by more than one Achilles heel. The fantasist and dreamer has 
moreover the added advantage of a greater dexterity in the interpretation 
of the visible world, thanks to his well-cultivated artistic vision. With 
transcendental perception his eye sees through things and happenings, 
and he thus uncovers and senses the deeper causalities and reasons which 
remain hidden to the cold and expressionless fishy eye of the "realist." 
Protestantism as well as technicism has contributed a great deal toward 
the firm entrenchment of "realism" in the modern world. The former 



* That explains the lack of ambition of the nonprogressive European who always 
would feel outraged if accused of being ambitious. A young Englishman or American 
would consider the same characteristic as highly flattering; in France the remark "c'est 
un ambitieux" is extremely derogatory. 

** The best conservative cultural review of Germany is called Das Innere Reich — 
The Inner Realm. 



268 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

preached an unnatural "soberness" while the latter actuated a real "desic- 
cation" of the human mind. 250 

Already in decadent Rome, where a populace with a phantasy crippled 
through a megalopolitan way of life clamored for circenses, do we witness 
this decline of the imaginative and artistic faculties of a people. That 
process is today accelerated through the leveling tendencies in general 
education and the increasingly technical and collective methods of pro- 
duction. The average man from the nonindustrial world (South Italian, 
American Indian, Arabian, Persian, Ruthene, Slovakian, etc.), is often 
unable to read or to write, yet he is self-sufficient and can be independent 
of the artificial forms of megalopolitan amusement because he can sing 
or produce poems, carve wood, paint or compose; he is able to invent 
new fairy tales, to weave, to stitch, or to play an instrument ; he is often 
a good conversationalist and his humor has roots without being derived 
from half a dozen funny papers; as a peasant he has a deep organic 
connection with nature and as a craftsman he can be a true artist, using 
all his personality to create objects of art. The craftsmen of Ur, Shinar, 
Lagash or Babylon had undoubtedly greater satisfaction with their fin- 
ished products than the workers in Henry Ford's River Rouge plant — 
in spite of the fact that the Ford worker can read and write (in order to 
send telegrams and read ads). Yet the workers of Detroit contribute less 
to literature than the Old Karelians who in spite of their illiteracy pro- 
duced the "Kalevala." It is even highly probable that all the great Euro- 
pean epics were composed by illiterates and only later on recorded. 251 

The decline of phantasy naturally engenders a decrease of the mani- 
foldness of forms, because all new combinations (inventions) are nothing 
else but "Castles in Spain" brought to reality. 252 The terrifying lack of 
phantasy is also the reason for the imitative urge in our modern American 
civilization and the predominance of monotony in the industrial centers.* 
This decline can only be measured by comparison with phantasy (and 
intellectual-artistic production) prior to ochlocracy, mass immigration, 
and industrialization. Hardly is there anywhere in the United States a 
church possessing originality which has been built after 1 840.** The houses 



* William Dean Howell in his Criticism and Fiction (New York, 1891) attacked 
phantasy as an "aristocratic" vice. "Democracy" in his opinion is bound to "realism," 
i.e., Sachlichkeit, p. 321. 

** This is typically "Protestant" limitation as the North European development of 
ecclesiastic styles stopped with the reformation. Neither did Catholic architects have 
enough courage to build modern churches. An imitation gothic church is not a sufficient 
or efficient challenge to pagan modernity. Modern art must be either destroyed or 
"baptized" and it can only be destroyed if we provide a living alternative. 



THE AMERICAN TRAGEDY 269 

of God are usually misplaced gothic or romanesque imitations squeezed 
in between dismal railway stations or surging skyscrapers. It is even more 
shocking to see the abortive efforts of town planning, or the Utopian 
habit of naming streets after mere numbers or letters. A cultured man 
cannot possibly live in room 6489 on the sixty-fourth floor of a house on 
the corner or 109th Street and 10th Avenue. This may be fitting for one 
of the unfortunate creatures in Huxley's Brave New World but not for 
man created in the image of God. 

We have touched already the problem of the child of technical civiliza- 
tion who is unable to amuse himself alone. Most English people suffer 
from the same shortcoming. Conversation is almost out of question. The 
South or East European (or the Central and South American) on the other 
hand is still able to sit and to talk or even to be silent and to look for 
hours thoughtfully into the sky. Not so the product of the technical 
world; he needs his artificial clubs and his very amusement is provided 
by an elaborate and expensive industry ; this amusement industry is of an 
astounding manifoldness, it comprises not only Coney Island and Play- 
land, but also the whole legion of trashy magazines full of sex, crime, and 
financial success, and — last not least — the movies, this serialized pro- 
duction of daydreams. Even England has an average of 17,000,000 "pic- 
ture goers" weekly in peacetimes; on Albion's green island relatively 
good seats can be obtained for as little as fifteen cents in out of town 
cinemas for double-feature performances. Here the little man after the 
day's miseries is received by a smart-looking gentleman in a tuxedo, 
usherettes with naked legs, and the sweetest fake smile, who accompany 
the "patron" to his upholstered seat where he receives consolation and 
forgetfulness.* Drugged by the oscillating pictures our little man starts 
to identify himself with the hero. He, the little accountant in the button 
factory, who is suppressed and persecuted by his boss, his wife, his daugh- 
ters, and his "friends," now identifies himself with the athlete of Holly- 
wood on the screen, who chokes the tigers with his bare fists. Similarly, 
the elderly working woman seated next to him identifies herself with the 
glamorous daughter of the millionaire who has only to give a languishing 
look in order to have ten men with sleek black hair and buccaneer 



* The June, 1940, number of the American monthly Screenland brought an article 
entitled: "Satisfy Your Suppressed Desires at the Movies." Thus the cinema is acknowl- 
edged as a clearinghouse for Freudian "complexes" and a repair shop for defective 
personalities. 



270 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

moustaches at the beck of a finger. Then comes the awakening and the 
emptiness. . . . 

Yet the most important result of the shrinkage of phantasy is to be 
found in the lack of ability for religious metaphysical visualization. The 
decay of the imaginative faculty has in this field the most detrimental 
consequences. 253 Eternal life, God and devil, the angels, the lives of the 
saints, Golgatha and the Resurrection, the whole theistic Weltanschauung 
surpasses completely the faculties of the technical homunculus, who like 
the unfortunate Apostle Thomas only believes what he sees. 

The religious communities of the United States, in the industrial areas, 
who depend upon their flock financially, have therefore to interest their 
members in material, social, and political questions. These religious 
societies are in exactly the same situation as the "intellectuals" who fol- 
low public opinion instead of leading it, the press 254 or the higher institu- 
tions of learning. 855 The Catholics at least have nowhere compromised on 
the essentials. The "Churches" on the other hand, have followed the trend 
toward the left in a slavish way, trembling in their shoes lest they be 
accused of being old fashioned, reactionary, or uncompromising. The 
masses who cared more and more for security, after having lost their 
enthusiasm for the lottery of liberal capitalism with increasingly unfa- 
vorable odds, have induced the shrewder and more "farseeing" part of the 
ministry to side with Leftism, thus hoping for a longer lease of life. 
This involves the acceptance of socialist and pink tendencies, an en- 
thusiasm for all humanitarian and "progressive" ideas like birth control, 
the surgical abortus, euthanasia, "free love," and pacifism, not to mention 
the numerous inroads of modern skepticism, so that little of the deposi- 
tum fidei remains. The residue is a pale, problematic humanitarianism, 
which looks with greater respect to the "Men in White" than to the 
ministers of their faith.* 256 

The inner crisis of America — the cultural as well as the religious and 
the political one — cannot be overlooked, although the prophecy of de 
Tocqueville hardly takes into account the older American tradition and 
sounds therefore less convincing. America's great danger lurks at that 
impasse where lay government must forcibly change into an expert 



* Communism in the United States is thus largely an outgrowth of humanitarianism 
aggravated by the candid superstition of progress. It lacks thoroughly the interesting 
apocalyptic qualities of Eastern Bolshevism in its early stage. 



THE AMERICAN TRAGEDY 271 

government.* This is the critical moment when Fascism, Nazism, or 
something similar might easily step in, and then all would be lost. 

Fascism in the United States — where tradition is still a small, growing 
plant and society is forming itself under great pains, nobly struggling 
for organic integration — would be a thousand times more brutal, anti- 
cultural, and devastating than in any European country. The structure 
of American industrial society is far from vigorous or harmonious, 257 nor 
does it possess an inner happiness and balance because it is still under- 
going its "troubles of adolescence," 258 nor, finally, is it in a good position 
to oppose a well co-ordinated attack directed against its last shreds of 
liberty. 259 No industrial civilization, anywhere and at anytime, can resist 
a well-organized revolutionary identitarian onslaught, and the industrial 
areas of the United States are geographically too remote from its agrarian 
counterparts in order to profit from their "counterrevolutionary" 
elements. 

There is an additional danger in the emptiness and monotony of "small 
life" in the United States, in the monotony of suburbia, in the small 
towns and in the agrarian plains, a monotony greatly created by uni- 
formity. Boredom and routine could here easily make an appeal to vital 
energies looking for an outlet, aspiring to "action," craving for adventure. 
James T. Farrel in his various novels has again and again portrayed the 
"lost young man," in his attempts to color his barren existence by some 
form of violent activity. Yet there are hundreds of thousands of Studs 
Lonigans who do not know with what to start their lives, and that is true 
not only in the big cities but also in small towns and villages. What after 
all can the average young man, eager for action in the world of today, 
do? Duels, crusades, discoveries have come to an end. The "inner king- 
dom" of phantasy and imagination has been dried out by "sober think- 
ing" or comics and movies. Naturally, there is religion and the Holy 
Folly of the Cross, there is intellectualism (the consolation of the intel- 
lect), there is alcohol and sex (the adventures of despair) or, finally, 
crime: the attraction of Blue Jaw Magoon's Purple Gang, the life of a 
"gorilla" or of an ace trigger man. The pent up energies of young man- 
hood needs some sort of outlet in the stone deserts of Brooklyn, Detroit, 
or Chicago. 

The solutions suggested are naturally of an extreme character; there 
is little likelihood that young men in large numbers will be drunk with 



* Which means either discrimination in franchise or ascendancy of the administra- 
tion over the legislation. 



272 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

God because there is little of the spirit of Clairveaux, Solesmes, Assisi, 
Loyola, or Beuron in the United States. Nor yet do they want to be 
candidates for the electric chair, nor are the higher intellectual values 
communicable to vast numbers. Political parties of the totalitarian type 
on the other hand promise "everything" — faith (in a worldly millen- 
nium), intellectuality (on a sentimental basis), drunkenness (with 
words), crime (of the "honorable," i.e., political type). An American 
Fascism of tomorrow might actually attract all "better" elements leaving 
the scum to its pastime of drink, theft, and sex. Needless to say this is a 
dangerous game. It may be that these elements, having a free hand, 
would "save America" for the "White Man," and Christianity might thus 
well-nigh become a tolerated religion, 260 but the Church as such would 
suffer bitterly in the long run and the catacombs might be her last stage 
of development here in this country.* 

In the sober forties there will be another generation, steeled by the war, 
grimmer in outlook, far more determined to have its own way. The gen- 
eration of the twenties was one of despair, of despair for the "right 
reasons"; there is a danger that our decade will be one of wrong and 
false aims. 261 The issue is thus far graver. Most planning (whether it is 
done by ochlocrats, Fascists, Pinks, or Communists) points to a radical 
decrease of liberty. Yet there is no doubt that the end of liberty in 
America would be practically the end there of the Church. 

These inner political issues of utmost gravity are now overshadowed 
by the grim realities of a total war in which our very existence is at 
stake. Conscription (and voluntary service) will absorb a large propor- 
tion of the young men who will profit from a little discipline and drill.** 
The hold of the experts, the presidential power, the importance of the 
ministries and the armed forces will increase constantly. This war may 
prove after all to be a great opportunity to make the necessary reforms 
which will reform lay power and recast party influences in a qualitative 
sense and thus avoid the danger of the formation of a mass party and the 
rise of a mass leader after the war. To carry out this task properly, to 
enact this transition without the further (lasting) loss of liberties for the 
individual needs divine assistance. Nothing is more difficult than to swim 



♦We will deal with this question (and the whole problem of American culture) more 
intensively and extensively in our next work. 

** Neither should it be forgotten that a disillusioned generation well disciplined and 
skilled in the arts of war can become an even greater asset in the hands of a totalitarian 
leader. 



THE AMERICAN TRAGEDY 273 

against the stream and to act against the "spirit of time" short-circuiting 
the development from ochlocracy to tyranny and to reach over to the 
"next" historical period, which must be one of freedom in an order sup- 
ported by law and knowledge, not one of collective tyranny based upon a 
sensate hysterical animalism. There is no such thing as a historical fatal- 
ity; there is only a historical nemesis which punishes those who have 
hesitated to act when action was still possible. 

The last war gave a few totalitarian teetotalers an ugly chance to pass 
a law which regulated the diet of Free Americans. The war is, as the 
Greeks have recognized it before, the father of all things. The present 
war may prove to be the turning point to a new era and the Kaipos, the 
"time of opportunity and action," may be nearer than any of us believe. 
The moment of necessary reform will come and the new way of life 
(both changes intrinsically interconnected) may not be so far behind. 
This new way of life must be the synthesis of two great traditions ; the 
Catholic one and the Anglo-American one, Baltimore and Boston, faith 
and liberty. This new-old way of life must be like a tree with roots in the 
past, roots in the soil and its branches and leaves must be turned to time- 
less, eternal truth. It must not be made of paper; it must be living and 
pulsating, satisfying the heart as well as the intellect. 

Poor and glorious America! Never in history has a country carried 
such great responsibility in its formative age, in its period of growth and 
maturation. Never in history have men of good will all the world over 
looked with such great expectancy and hope toward any other land. 
Never in history had a nation more bitter struggles to regain its balance, 
to find its soul, to shape its face than America. Europe was a hard and 
cruel mother continent to the Americas, covering them with her amor- 
phous surplus population, dumping these in incoherent fragments over 
a young country barely emerging from its childhood and adolescence. 

Without wealth and without tradition, without learning and often with- 
out piety, did Europe's lost children arrive on these shores to start a new 
life, to help in building America. Never were men more cruelly exposed 
to the ravages of industry, to the temptations of money, to all heresies 
and aberrations of a godless century, of a faithless age. The Europeans 
in the shadows of their cathedrals, under the walls of their old monas- 
teries, had something to lean upon, reserves to draw from. And yet, it is 
the parent who has fallen a victim, who has become the "Apostle of her 
Apostasies," and it is America that has taken over the torch from her 
trembling hand. 



274 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

Said Edmund Burke, America's great friend and advocate: 

The Western world was the seat of freedom until another, more Western, 
was discovered; and that other will probably be its asylum when it is hunted 
down in every other part. Happy it is that the worst of times may have one 
refuge still left for humanity.* 



* Cit. by Lord Acton, Lectures on the French Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1910). 



PART IV 

THE ISSUE 



"Nothing is more characteristic of the intellectuals of our generation than 
their failure to understand what it is that is happening to their world, and 
nothing explains their failure as precisely as their unwillingness to see what 
they have seen and to know what they do truly know. — Archibald Macleish, 
The Irresponsibles . 



I 

COMMUNISM* 



Politics is like the legendary sphinx who devoured 

all those who could not solve her riddles. 

— Rivarol. 

It is not a mere coincidence that almost all prominent Socialists and 
Communists were of middle-class descent. 262 The basic problem of 
middle-class life is security — in the national as well as in the personal 
sense. 203 The two classes which have the greatest inner affinities and 
likeness, the working class and the middle class, both live in the cities 
and the vast majorities of both classes are employees and not free men. 
There is a difference in income which is nevertheless not so startling 
as one is wont to believe. The middle classes are forced to spend 
relatively large sums for the sake of appearances (clothes, furni- 
ture, higher rents for "better neighborhood"), which makes it often more 
difficult for the white-collar class to save and to enjoy personal luxuries 
(as, for instance, holidays, good food, etc.). It is merely the haute bour- 
geoisie and the small enterpriser who belong sociologically (or rather 
typologically) to a different "class" or "group." 

But if we compare the worker and the petty bourgeois we must say 
that the former has many bourgeois and the latter many "proletarian" 
traits. Of all salaried professions the officials and army men have the 
greatest security and there has always been in Europe a curious trend 
in all bourgeois groups for careers in the bureaucracy. He who had the 
greatest security was the most admired of all. The worker shares this 
admiration in all bourgeois civilizations and thus he is not immune 



* The reader is reminded that German aggression against the Soviet Union does not 
make her our ideological ally although we are bound to her militarily. To give military 
help to the Soviet Union is not only a matter of prudence; it is also morally justifiable 
because we help her to get rid of the domination of a foreign power which has its own 
system of the suppression of personal liberties. 

277 



278 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

against the terrible, bourgeois promise of bolshevism: "Ye shall all be 
state employees ! Ye shall all get insurance and pensions Z" 264 

This promise of a millennium of absolute security had little effect in 
those countries which lacked a middle class or the bourgeois spirit,* as, 
for instance, Albania, Lappland, Persia, Afghanistan, or Ethiopia. Social- 
ism and bolshevism had a strong appeal in some countries on account of 
their promises to the national cause (Bulgaria and partly Mexico), in 
others again it was the revolutionary appeal (Spain, Greece, Italy, Chile). 
In the latter case bolshevism is essentially "Revolution in Permanence," 
but not a new, bourgeois order bent on promoting material security. 

In the technical-capitalistic-bourgeois world communism is even in the 
lowest ranks of the working or proletarian classes entirely unproletarian. 
This is true of communism in England, the United States, Scandinavia, 
and perhaps in France. In these countries communism or communist 
propaganda never even made a pretense to increase human liberty or to 
liberate the individual from the dreadful collective slavery of the factory 
or the office; all the party promised was to change the management, i.e., 
to put state officials instead of private enterprisers behind the leather 
doors, and to make every plant or office a branch of the gigantic 
machinery of the total as well as totalitarian state, thus giving the sacral 
dignity of a "state employee" even to the last night watchman. Imperial 
Russia had two million of Cinovniki — state officials who have been so 
well portrayed by Nicholas Gogol — but thanks to the technocratic 
evolution of the Soviet Union we have now six and a half million of 
these high priests of government (who have been equally well portrayed 
by Katayev) ; the total number of all state employees, direct and indirect, 
must be somewhere in the vicinity of sixty and seventy millions. 

Bolshevism has frequently acted as the trail blazer of bourgeois civil- 
ization and the pioneer of the middle-class mind in countries with a 
feudal, agrarian, or nomadic culture. Russia today is far more bourgeois 
than it used to be twenty-five years ago and the havoc wrought by 
bolshevism in central Asia can hardly be estimated. It is pretty certain 
that an average New York white-collar worker would feel today far 
more "at home" in Moscow than forty years ago. He would find that 



* Russia had a comparatively numerous lower middle class which became an easy prey 
of communism. We find a series of thumbnail sketches depicting the representatives of this 
quickly bolshevized class in E. v. Kuehnelt-Leddihn's Gates of Hell. The agrarian peasant 
bolshevism was of the anarchical type in the best tradition of Pugatshev; the suffering of 
the peasantry began with the introduction of collectivization imposed by the urban 
Communists. 



COMMUNISM 279 

people speak his "language." The materialistic philosophy of Lenin 
would be more comprehensible to him than the ideas of Vladimir 
Soloviev. 

The impressions many travelers received in the USSR culminate in 
the observation that this gigantic country, with a mystical Christian 
past, transforms itself into an immense suburbia extending from the 
White to the Black Sea, a suburbia inhabited by an antlike, commuting 
population of straphangers and bourgeois. There is nothing more un- 
proletarian than these dull "bourgeois" (grazhdanini) with their "Amer- 
icanized" tastes, their enthusiasm for skyscrapers and the other mani- 
festations of "progress," these Babbits with their nostalgia for two-room 
apartments, a quarter share of a motor car and improved club buildings. 

It is nevertheless true that continental communism is "proletarian" 
inasmuch as it considers the proletariat to be the savior class and an 
aristocracy for the transitional stage (when there will be only one class). 
Yet in spite of this program it is very unlikely that an "extreme" class 
(the Fourth not less than the First Estate) can ever become a "common 
denominator." Bourgeois standards and ideas influence, on account of 
their teletic magnetism, the proletarian world of the USSR, and the 
result is the terrifying suburbanization of Russia. Communism in Great 
Britain and the United States immediately made the short cut to integral 
"bourgeoisism" ; the worker in the Anglo-Saxon world would hardly be 
pleased to be called a proletarian or to remain one. Communism in the 
United States and England is indeed essentially and substantially a 
movement of the semi-intellectual middle class with a good sprinkling 
of the quarter intellectual upper class. Communism in the United States 
would hardly be identified with the slums of lower Manhattan, the dust 
bowlers of Kansas, or the miners of Pennsylvania. . . . The word com- 
munism rather evokes associations like professors of state colleges with 
thick lenses in their spectacles, parlor pinks with Harvard accents, bored 
Park Avenue hostesses, anemic little East Europeans in public libraries, 
"progressive" and "advanced" psychologists specialized in sexual dis- 
orders, and unbearably conceited "foreign" correspondents. 

The gospel of the Bolsheviks has for our middle class with its material- 
istic outlook, its Rentnerseele, a truly apocalyptic strength and a satanical 
power of temptation. Our materialistic society can theoretically not be 
saved from bolshevism by itself {or from the more "national" form of 
socialism) because these political and economical theories are nothing 
else but the last iron consequences of their own herdist ideologies. With 



280 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

a little more honesty and a little less liberal inhibitions (and these fizzle 
out slowly) they should have surrendered a long time ago. After the 
rejection of the Cross by the homo oeconomicus all his interest became 
centered around the problem of increased income. Instead of the beatific 
vision, insurance and pensions became the axis of human longing. For 
pensions and increased salaries the Bolsheviks slaughtered three million 
people and exposed twenty million people to the bitter death of starva- 
tion. The National Socialists are now on the best way to commit similar 
atrocities for the benefit of another millennium with superhighways and 
an economical Lebensraum. Thus we see geocentrism and the brutal 
craving for material welfare leading to madness, mass slaughter, and 
the demoniacal construction of Babylonic Towers. And one must fear 
that we are now only at the very beginning of a series of catastrophes. 
The gates of hell are wide open and the reason for the cataclysmic char- 
acter of this age has never been better characterized than by Vassili 
Rozanov in his Apocalypsis of Our Time where he says : 

The deeper reason for everything now happening lies in the fact that 
owing to the withering away of Christianity enormous cavities have 
originated in the European World. Everything tumbles down now into these 
cavernous hollows.* 

Russian bolshevism has many aspects which can only be understood 
properly if we bring them into correlation with the Russian scene. This 
would require a book of its own and we must rather limit ourselves to 
the communist sentiment as we find it at large in the Occidental world. 

It is, of course, only too natural that a young man, brought up in 
the bourgeois spirit which culminates in the cognition that material 
issues are the most important ones, finally finds his way to Communism. 
If the production and distribution of goods is the problem of humanity 
it is difficult to see how a sincere, altruistic, and logical thinker, accepting 
the preceding statement as axiomatic, can under present circumstances 
come to any other solution than that offered by Moscow. The egoist, on 
the other hand, finally lands in Manchester. An education based on £.s.d. 
or on dollars and cents, inspired by the awe for technical "progress," i.e., 
a modern, ochlocratic education, can hardly establish other aims of 
existence. 265 

It is exactly this eagerness and unhesitating acceptance of bourgeois 
values which characterizes the Communist. What he usually accuses as 



* Apokalipsis naSego vremeni, Paris, 1926. 



COMMUNISM 281 

being typically "bourgeois" is nothing else than the survival of Cath- 
olic-Christian tradition, and not the views conceived as true and ideal 
by the nineteenth-century godless, progressive, and progressing bourgeois. 
The intellectual exponents of the agnostic middle classes in the later 
part of the past century had already established norms, ideas, and ideals 
which the timid city dweller did not dare to accept straight away. It is 
true that these materialistic creeds were final, logical conclusions of ideas 
and trends already in existence for the past hundred years but the urban 
tradition of compromise and of the tame "fifty-fifty" prevailed for a 
long time. The urbanites act in masses and masses move slowly. There 
were a few men who braved the old Christian morals and traditions and 
plunged headlong into the realization of 100 per cent modernism, but 
the large bulk of the middle class "citoyens" looked with misgiving upon 
these people whom they considered partly as dissolute bohemiens, partly 
as "radicals." Yet the "radical" of the fin-de-siecle was no revolutionary 
whatsoever but simply a person — or rather an individual — who 
seriously believed in the gospels of Thomas Huxley, Haeckel, Nietzsche, 
Buchner, Fechner, Virchow, and Ibsen, and acted accordingly. Neither 
are the progressivists, in present-day America, revolutionaries or enemies 
of the order. Being "radical" or "progressive" they merely want to con- 
tinue with greater speed and determination along the established, wrong 
trail. 

One cannot repeat it often enough that the only true revolutionary in 
this world is the Church with her basic opposition to the very spirit 
of our modern times. The same is true, to a certain extent, of every 
genuine, freedom-loving tradition which is based upon the Catholic notion 
of human responsibility and the free will, for whose philosophical and 
theological defense the Society of Jesus has earned everlasting merits.* 

Though bourgeois in spirit, communism (like any other ideology) can 
transcend its class limitations, but it will always betray its origin. 266 
W. H. Auden, for instance, in his enthusiasm for Red Spain, could not 
refrain from seeing the future of that country molded and shaped by 
the spirit of Welwyn Garden City or Bronxville in preference to that 
of Cervantes, Goya, or Calderon. 



* There is hardly a better description of a totalitarian state based upon (religious) 
determinism than in Stefan Zweig's admirably written book Castellio Against Calvin 
(New York, 1936). The parallels between Calvin's Geneva and the "Germany" of the 
racial determinists are obvious and the paradoxical brutality against a population 
allegedly without free will the same. (Yet the very brutality, even if itself senseless, 
can be excused by "Divine predestination," "Racial urge," and similar confusions.) 



282 THE MENACE OF THE HEED 

Yet the great consolation for the enemies of state capitalism — we are 
referring here to the private capitalists — is the illusion that Communism 
is not feasible at all because it is "against human nature." Such an 
argument is nothing else but Rousseauan optimism ; as if "progress" has 
not succeeded in producing hundreds of items which are "contrary to 
human nature," and which nevertheless were generally accepted. But 
the mere allusion that communism might be successful (as successful as 
equally inhuman superbombs) makes our private capitalists furious 
beyond measure. The materialistic bourgeois world is fed with success 
stories, success talks, phrases like "nothing succeeds like success," and 
success attracts them as light attracts the moths.* In such a culture all 
those who have cash are beloved and the beggars are treated with 
suspicion. 

Communism was very clever in playing up the success story, and the 
bulging eyes of miserable straphangers devouring pictures of gigantic 
tractors, barge canals, and power plants reflect the mystical attraction 
of massed material on the minds of the urban simpletons. 

The National Socialists put forth similar propaganda, and we must 
not forget that the history of Leftism is one of almost endless victories, 
the history of Rightism one of almost endless defeats. The Stuarts, the 
Carlist Pretenders, the Habsburgs, the Church in Northern Europe, 
Austria as against Prussia, the Sonderbund as against Swiss centralism, 
the White Armies in Russia, the Bourbons in France — they all lost, 
were beaten, defeated, and rendered powerless. They may be ultimately 
victorious — in the sense that Christ was after the crucifixion. Yet it 
is always the defeat, the "Lost Cause" which attracts the noble man 
who is a loving man and whose heart turns instinctively toward those 
who suffer and not toward those who triumph. 267 

Rightist ideas on the other hand are only truly magnetic if they are 
absolutely pure; Leftist ideas, on account of their materialistic and 
heretic essence, never demand perfection. Mediocrity is the death of 
every Rightist movement, but it is the very air in which Leftism thrives. 
A totalitarian leader who betrays practically every point of his party 
program hardly shakes the faith of his fanatical followers, but mediocre 
monarchs, Popes, and prelates have destroyed the old order. 

The success of National Socialism had also an effect on many a money- 
bag in the City, an effect which can only be compared with the impression 



* The "interventionists" who got busy after every British victory and the isolationist 
who was riding high and mighty after every Allied defeat belong to the same category. 



COMMUNISM 283 

a boa constrictor makes on a rabbit. With the materialists, success 
becomes an argument in itself and immediately disarms the opponent. 
A fully successful communism in Russia would have the most devastating 
effect on the whole democratic-materialistic bourgeoisie, and almost 
nothing would stem the determination of the masses to sacrifice the 
little liberty they have for greater comfort and security. One is almost 
inclined to say that two cinema shows a day would render the Church 
(as "opium for the people") superfluous. 

Yet Russian communism is a reaction against religious and political 
forms prevailing in Russia prior to 1917, and is in many respects a 
"complementary heresy" to the Eastern Schism.* Occidental communism 
on the other hand (and we will include here National Socialism) is 
ideologically a direct and straight result of modern mentality, based on 
the French and the Industrial Revolutions. The parlor pink and the SS 
man did not arrive at their philosophy through an antinomistic revulsion 
but through logical conclusions from the wrong axiomatic premises of 
the nineteenth century. 

•Russian bolshevism, replacing eastern Christendom by the grim 
religiosity of Marx, produced a caricature of the evangelical counsels 
with many a diabolical aspect. There is a good deal of "communism" in 
monasteries and convents, yet this is based upon a voluntary renunciation 
of perfect human rights. On account of our free will we can make 
supreme sacrifices which ennobles our very existence. Bolshevism on the 
other hand forces us brutally into a parody of monastic life amidst 
fellow monks and fellow nuns who hate their habit and sigh under the 
ferocious tyranny of their pseudo-abbot. This evil distortion of an 
otherwise Christian ideal is more satanic** than wanton, a thoroughly 
pagan and diabolic opposition to Christian existence. This explains also 



* See E. v. Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Jesuiten, Spiesser, Bolschewiken, Salzburg, 1933, 
pp. 53-54. 

** National socialism has no less satanic background. The deplorable lies spread by 
the Allies in 1914-18 against imperial Germany were largely trumped up or faked. An 
image of Germany was shown to the horrified Allied citizens as it never existed in 
reality. An old Austrian proverb says: "Never paint the devil on the wall." It dates 
back to a Viennese saga about a very humorous painter whose exhuberance and fearless- 
ness astonished everybody. One day, having had a little too much new wine — the 
famous Heurigen — he boasted that he could paint a portrait of the devil on the wall 
of the inn. His frightened companions tried to dissuade him from this plan, but in 
vain. Hardly had the unfortunate artist finished the portrait when it came to life and 
Satan, leaping from the wall, throttled the terrified painter to death. 

Something similar happened to the Allies. The Third Reich is the propaganda picture 
of the Second Reich come to life. 



284 



THE MENACE OF THE HERD 



the reason why the Vatican has found stronger words against "altruistic" 
bolshevism than against egoistic capitalism. 

Before closing the chapter on communism we shall make a short 
resume of the main characteristics of "democracy," National Socialism, 
and communism (in its dogmatic form regardless of temporary Russian 
practices). Democratism, it is understood, will be treated here in its 
undiluted (continental) form, free of all alien (liberal Anglo-Saxon) 
influences.* 



Continental Democratism 
(Ochlocracy) 

An "individual." Subor- 
dinated to the majority 
(general will). Rallying 
point "Mr. Average 
Man" (Mediocrity) 343 



Communism 

The Person 
An "individual." Sub- 
ordinated to the dic- 
tatorship of the largest 
class. Leveling down 
to establish identity 
and equality. 



National Socialism 



An "individual." Sub- 
ordinated to the gen- 
eral will, embodied and 
personified by the lead- 
er. Rallying point is 
the "happy medium." 



Megalopolitan and 
Suburban 



Middle-middle class 



Culture (type) 
Megalopolitan and 
Suburban 

Leading Layer 
Lower middle class 



Megalopolitan and 
Suburban 



Lower middle class 



"Tolerated." Separation 
of state and Church. De- 
priving the Church of any 
official status. (Laicisme.) 
Church in the "Ghetto" 



A "legal contract." State 
takes supreme jurisdic- 
tion. In some cases eu- 
genic legislation (for 
"Health"). Divorce. 



The Church 
"Persecuted." Condem- 
nation of all religious 
and metaphysical doc- 
trines. "Church in the 
Catacombs." 



Marriage 

The same 
Divorce 



"Molested." Church 
suspected of disloyalty 
and degraded by pro- 
hibition of all cultural 
activities. 344 "Church 
in the Ghetto, on the 
way to Catacombs" 

The same, but state 
control even tighter on 
account of health as 
well as racial policy. 
Divorce 



* Democratism is here the phenomenon Christopher Dawson would call continental 
or Rousseauan democracy of the 1792 brand. 



COMMUNISM 



285 



Continental Democratism 
(Ochlocracy) 



Right of state to dispose 
of children recognized 
( compulsory education ) . 
No religious education in 
state schools. Rights of 
parents curtailed. 



Communism 

Education 
The same. School is 
simultaneously a party 
institution. 



National Socialism 



The same. Religious 
education increasingly 
curtailed.* 



Modern Technicism 
Enthusiastically accepted. Same 



Same 



A Utopia a la Bellamy or 
Aldous Huxley with a 
maximum of material 
comfort and health. 



Aim of Society 
Same 



Same 



Private capitalism 



Social System 
State capitalism Private, state-controlled 

capitalism (a synthe- 
sis of both!) 



"Conditioned" by 
environment 



Human Will 
"Conditioned" by class "Conditioned" by race 



Philosophy — Weltanschauung 
Society: Utilitarian Same Same 

Personal: Escapist or Same Same 

heroic pessimism 

Human Ideal 

The "ordinary decent Same Same ("Rechte 

chap," the "regular Kerle")** 

fellow." 



* The idea that the children belong to the State and not to the parents was first 
expressed by the Protestant minister Wolfgang Capito in his Responsio de missa, matri- 
monii) et iure magistratiis in religionem, Strassburg, 1707. But the most furious advocate 
of State rights over children was the notorious Marquis de Sade, member of the 
Convention. 

** Cf. Dr. Erich Kiihn, Schafft anstandige Kerle (Berlin, 1939). 



286 



THE MENACE OF THE HERD 



Continental Democratism 
(Ochlocracy) 



Communism 



National Socialism 



Anthropocentric 
Geocentric 
Herdist 

Egalitarian and 
Identitarian 



Attitude Toward Environment 

Same Same 

Same Same 

Same Same 

Same Same 



Uniformity 

Uniformistic army of 
conscripts 



Aesthetic Ideal 
Same Same 

Defense System 
Same Same 



Ascertainment of Current Opinion 
Elections and plebiscites Same Same 

on the numerical majori- 
tarian principle ("count- 
ing noses")* 

Common Enemy 
True liberty. Diversity. Same Same 

Tradition. The Church. 
"Survivals" from the Mid- 
dle Ages. Personalism. 

(If we take into consideration that these three ideologies "grew," 
practically together, it is surprising that there is so much difference 
between them still left. Socialism is only about forty to fifty years 
younger than democratism, and nationalism assumed its racial character 
only another twenty or thirty years later. It must be conceded that 
ochlocratic democratism as the oldest of the three is undoubtedly 
the mildest.) 



* This is clearly not the Anglo-American principle which denies proportional repre- 
sentation. The President in the United States can actually be elected by a minority 
of votes provided he has a majority of electors. 



II 

WORLD WAR II 



"Humanity without Nationality is empty, nationality without 
humanity is blind." — Werner Sombart, Vom Menschen. 

Today every war is a "Holy War." Engaging a large part of the popula- 
tion it necessarily becomes a crusade. It is possible, of course, that 
money interest brought the United States into the last war.* And yet — 
the thousands of Americans who volunteered for the Allies and those who 
were conscripted but fought with enthusiasm, believed firmly that they 
were fighting a crusade for the sacred ideal of "democracy" whose ac- 
ceptance would be a benefit to every single nation in the world. In spite 
of this mistake it was nevertheless an idealism of the highest order which 
prompted these men and boys to offer their lives for the cause. Even if it 
were true that materialistic reasons were behind the declaration of war 
by the United States, these reasons were not the ones which fired the 
nation into action. There is no doubt that our time bred men pretty near 
to the type of the homo oeconomicus, but this monster exists neverthe- 
less only as an approximation and not as a reality. Nobody wants to risk 
or to lay down his life for a 10 per cent increase in wages or an additional 
bonus along with the old-age pension.** 

It is only too frequent that we see our historians laboriously engaged 
in research work trying to find "economic reasons" for the process of 
history. When John Green, Ph.D., faces the crusades he is aware that he 
himself would not fight for the Holy Sepulcher. His preoccupation with 
his salary and unpaid gas bills render him materially minded and there- 
fore he will continue his research until he makes the discovery that a 
Venetian smith, specialized in swords, was married to a woman whose 



* Yet even the argument used by Ferdinand Lundberg in America's Sixty Families, 
is not conclusive. 

** As to World War I and its supposedly economic background see Sidney Fay, 
Origins of the World War, New York, 1938, p. 46. 

287 



288 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

brother had a mistress whose uncle in turn drank wine with the butler of 
a Roman Cardinal who undoubtedly persuaded Urban II to start the 
crusades. His discovery (which makes "sense" of an otherwise senseless 
chapter of history) will be heralded as sensational and influence his col- 
leagues in continuing their efforts to find the real reasons for the differ- 
ent historical phenomena behind the mask of religious superstition, 
patriotic hypocrisy, ideological pretense, and dynastic make-believe. 

Yet there is an ideological element in every total war (if not for any 
other reasons, then simply because there are no two nations with exactly 
the same philosophy of life) and this ideological element is predominant 
in the present struggle. The economic problems could somehow have been 
patched up, and it is clear that no responsible statesman plunges a coun- 
try into a war merely because he owns a few armament shares. Such 
monsters who readily and consciously sacrifice millions of lives for hard 
cash exist almost exclusively in the phantasy of Bolsheviks (apart from a 
few individual cases which can be counted on the fingers.) 

It was a very marked concession to the spirit of the twentieth century 
when Hitler appealed to his nation to fight (amongst other reasons) for 
raw materials. The reason of this appeal was to create a general impres- 
sion in the German people that their country was one of the "have-nots" 
aspiring merely to economic equality. Thus we see clearly that National 
Socialism has already accepted the Marxian theory of class struggle by 
which the Proletarian strives to overthrow the rule of the "bourgeois." 
In order to achieve this goal, a dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary, 
a dictatorship made possible by a preceding revolution. The Third Reich, 
representing a nation of "have-nots" (or rather of "have-less"), enters 
now into the revolutionary phase which in its national collectivistic form 
is simply called "war." The conquest of Europe by Germany is nothing 
else but the dictatorship of the "proletariat." 

Yet the economic aspirations of the Third Reich — in the very inten- 
tion of its leaders — are thoroughly subordinated to the idea of power 
and domination, in short: to the imperialistic aims. The National Social- 
ists only want an economically strong and independent (autarchic) 
country in order to have political power, military strength and an abso- 
lute liberty of action. They do not care in the least whether the indi- 
vidual Herr Schmidt or Frau Krause have butter or margarine on their 
bread. The economic issue in relation to the individual stomach is there- 
fore purely secondary. Private enterprisers in Germany were not in the 
least enthusiastic about this war. Economic reasons on the side of the 



WORLD WAR II 289 

Allies, though weighty, were hardly sufficient to risk the life of practi- 
cally all of British and French manhood, and womanhood. The Third 
Reich could have organized the worst export dumping the world over 
and no British or French Prime Minister would have had the backing 
of their respective nations to engage in a war on such an issue. Even 
the total loss of all foreign trade would not have led to the third 
of September, 1939. 

The imperialistic aims again were clearly the outcome of the phil- 
osophy accepted by the Third Reich. It would be a fatal mistake to 
believe that this order of subordination — putting economics under polit- 
ical imperialism under philosophy — exists in the reverse. Only that fear- 
ful imaginary savage, the homo oeconomicus can perceive such a per- 
verted situation. 268 

(The homo oeconomicus is certainly not a "progressive" mirage in the 
evolutionary sense. Only the beast is economical through and through. A 
dog, a rat, or a hyena come nearest to this conception. They would not 
fight for anything else but sex, food, and shelter. It is the homo sapiens 
who dies for ideas and traditions, for religions and philosophies). 

American public opinion was deeply agitated before the attack on Pearl 
Harbor by the issue of isolationism versus interventionism ; some "isola- 
tionists" on the East coast charged that their opponents belonged pre- 
dominantly to the wealthy classes of old stock and British descent, an 
accusation which was not entirely without foundation in the section men- 
tioned. Yet if it is true that isolationism was stronger in the lower income 
brackets one can only be struck by the thoroughly uneconomical, ideal- 
istic, and "sentimental" attitude of a nation frequently accused of gross 
materialism. It must have been evident to the beati possidentes that a 
war would mean for them an almost disastrous taxation, death of their 
young men, a stronger hold of the New Deal and more curtailing state 
intervention in the economic life hitherto largely controlled by them. The 
"lower" classes, on the other hand, could hope for more employment, 
bigger wages, and a higher standard of living in case of America being 
involved in a "foreign" war. But the hatred of the whiggish upper ten 
for Hitler, the attachment to the land which gave them Milton and 
Shakespeare and tombstones to their own ancestors made them act against 
their economic interest while other ties, equally sentimental, and bitter 
memories influenced equally large layers of the American Nation in the 
opposite direction. 

The German case shows clearly the desire for a "bigger and better" 



290 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

Reich, sprung from National Socialist doctrine, and it also demonstrates 
that the conception of a bigger Germany is inseparable from the dogma 
of racial superiority due to the fact that a bigger Reich involves the 
domination of non-Germans by Germans 269 — for a period of transition, 
well understood. It would be a grave underestimate of the coercive power 
of ideas among (in a "closed" sense) logical and (in a broad sense) reli- 
gious nations, if one would attempt to deny their priority of thought. 
The principle to live first and to philosophize afterward they left to the 
more materialistic and practical nations. 

There is little if any permanent* sacrifice of these sacred ideological 
principles in the German World and no greater compromise may be ex- 
pected from this totally heretical ideology — National Socialism ; this is 
so in spite of the fact that every digression would be "justified" if it 
would only momentarily benefit the nation. In this unfortunate philos- 
ophy we find incorporated the age-old, tragically German Machiavellian 
spirit as personified by Hagen von Tronje in the Nibelungen Saga. But 
"what profits the people is right" reminds one strongly of Jeremiah 
Bentham. The Communists are also convinced Benthamists and each 
time the Kremlin made a compromise with capitalist concepts, the whole 
western world considered it as a sure sign that Soviet Russia had given 
up its "struggle against human nature." And all these wishful thinkers 
were each time bitterly disappointed because the Soviet Union made, for 
each step in their direction, two in the other. 

It is questionable whether the Russo-German pact was just one of these 
Benthamite escapades of the two totalitarian Empires. It may have had 
a far deeper sense and meaning than that of a mere act of expediency. At 
work, no doubt, was also the old geopolitical law : "The neighbor of my 
neighbor is my friend," and we have to ask ourselves whether the dis- 
appearance of Poland was not destined to affect the peaceful cooperation 
of these two superdemocracies. But at that time the cooperation of the 
Third German and the Third Russian Reich** was a natural combination, 

* Temporary betrayals of tenets of the National Socialist ideology should surprise 
nobody; a materialistic (and utilitarian) philosophy has not the same sense of honor 
as a religion or a metaphysical Weltanschauung. Communism also indulged in com- 
promises like the N.E.P. under Lenin or the Russo-German military alliance against 
Poland; arrangements ad hoc. 

** Many Russians, among them Dimitri Myerezhkovski, speak about the Third Russian 
Empire. The First Empire they consider to be the Kievian and early Muscovite Russia 
(Svyataya Russ) ; the Second Empire the Westernized, shallow Russia of Peter the 
Great (Rossiya) ; and the Third Empire the Soviet Union (Sovyetzkiy Soyuz) . The 
first Empire was (as in Germany) primarily religious, whereas the third one is merely a 
gross exaggeration of the second one which already had departed from the right way. 



WORLD WAR II 291 

and Peter Drucker in his End of Economic Man prophesied it five years 
ago. Only the wishful thinkers who saw the Germanies in the clutches 
of a "rightist" and "reactionary" ideology could not conceive this joining 
of hands with the "greatest democracy" in the world. The Third Reich is 
no less an ochlocracy than Russia. Mass man, against all expectations and 
calculations, celebrated his great victories East and not West of the 
Rhine. 270 

The result of the unholy alliance, at that time, between the German 
Republic* and the Soviet Republic has been seen. The similarity of their 
respective ideologies was not a sure guarantee of such a union. Com- 
munism and National Socialism are at the same time too similar (at 
heart) and too dogmatic not to cause the wrath of their court philosophers 
who will see in their opponents dangerous heretics. The popes would never 
have permitted schismatic bishops to reside in the Holy City, yet they 
hardly objected to the presence of Jewish rabbis. The desire in Berlin and 
in Moscow was to influence each other and this led to frictions and 
intrigues. And there was even more explosive material in the non- 
ideological (i.e., in the geopolitical) sphere. The clash between these two 
powers could thus be delayed but not avoided. 

The ideologies of both Third Empires, arising from ochlocratic demo- 
cratism, were foreseen with uncanny clearness by Alexis de Tocqueville, 
the great aristocratic French liberal, 110 years ago. Yet the forms of 
thought, life, and existence which, reversing the order, now demoniacally 
menace the West from their strongholds in the East, must be combated 
by those nations who have attained a certain immunity in this disease. 
Originally it was England and America (and France) who spread it, but 
now they know better and begin to see more clearly. These communitar- 
ian, herdist ideologies are nothing but gigantic exaggerations and distor- 
tions of their teachings, so great that the average citizen of these coun- 
tries is unable to see the connection and therefore considers them 
derived from their old bogeys, "reaction" and "medievalism." This error 
is, in a way, a very happy one. Otherwise a certain, very misplaced 
tenderness might arise in these people for their gargantuan, philosophical 
"grandchildren." English and a great deal of misguided (and misedu- 

The Second Empire is a break with the tradition (on account of the petrinian reforma- 
tion), yet the third one is an almost inevitable consequence of western, identitarian 
"isms" of which Panslavism was the most spectacular preparation. 

* Germany is officially still a Republic; the Weimar Constitution has, in spite of 
numerous "amendments," never been formally abrogated. 



292 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

cated) American public opinion would be filled with uncertainty and 
uneasiness should it ever become clear that "communism" has it roots 
firmly in doctrines preached in this country as well. The Second and 
Third German and Russian Empires as well as the present, terrible war 
would not exist if it were not for the preceding progressive excesses of 
such phenomena as : 

1. The Lutheran and the Petrinian "reform." 

2. The influence of the French and Industrial Revolutions. 

3. Militarism, Nationalism, Capitalism, Socialism: all derived from No. 2. 

4. The establishment of philosophical, political parties and ideological 
Parliaments. 

5. The breakdown of the Christian monarchical idea and system. 

6. The rise of the modern, diracini megalopolis with its herdism. 

7. The pseudo-scientific attitude toward man. 

Needless to emphasize, all these trends were and are considered to be 
"progressive" and all these tendencies have always been bitterly assailed 
by the Church, who therefore was ridiculed and attacked by all those who 
now, in the West, ache under the sinister menace of the satanical syn- 
thesis of all their heresies. Today it is slowly dawning upon the minds of 
those who had misjudged the issues and, it must be said in all fairness, 
that there always was a minority in Continental Europe which was able 
to "see" or at least to "sense" the outcome. The effect of a candlelight in 
a dark room might be instanced in explanation of this minority of upright 
men of good will and good judgment. Under ordinary conditions such a 
light penetrates the darkness and can be perceived from the remotest 
corner of the room. In the Germanies (and in Russia) this light might 
be even more conspicuous, more shining, more brilliant than in other 
places, but the ferocious, smoky darkness is nevertheless far more im- 
penetrable. Only if we move to the very center of the room can we touch 
the flame and feel its warmth on the outstretched hand. It will be nec- 
essary for the enemies — are they really enemies? — of the Third Em- 
pires to smash the windows, let the smoke escape, and make the room 
habitable once more. This operation is not only necessary for Germany 
but for the rest of Europe and the entire world. It is a tragic fact that 
the country which was once the Holy Roman Empire, the great physical 
heart of Christendom, must be saved by the "secular" realms. 271 

The prophecy of Count de Tocqueville concerning the advent of the 
identitarian horrors should be read in full. It should have been a warning 
for all those who have been playing with the dangerous toys — identity 



WORLD WAR II 29 o 

and uniformity — ages ago. His warning was never listened to and one 
can almost hear the mass of hommes mSdiocres exclaim in unison 107 
years before our time: "Vous exagerez! Vous exagerez!" He wrote: 

I had remarked during my stay in the United States that a democratic 
state of society, similar to that of the Americans, might offer singular facil- 
ities for the establishment of despotism; and I perceive upon my return to 
Europe, how much use had already been made by most of our rulers of the 
notions, the sentiments, the wants engendered by this same social condition, 
for the purpose of extending the circle of their power. This led me to think 
that the nations of Christendom would perhaps eventually undergo some sort 
of oppression like that which hung over several nations of the ancient world. 
A more accurate examination of the subject, and five years of further medi- 
tations have not diminished my apprehensions, but they have changed the 
object of them. No sovereign ever lived in former ages so absolute or so 
powerful as to undertake to administer, by his own agency and without the 
assistance of intermediate powers, all the parts of a great empire; none ever 
attempted to subject all his subjects indiscriminately to strict uniformity of 
regulation, and personally to tutor and direct every member of the com- 
munity. No notion of such an undertaking ever occurred to the human mind 
and if any man had conceived it the want of information, the imperfections 
of the administrative system and above all the natural obstacles caused by 
the inequalities of conditions, would speedily have checqued the execution 
of so vast a design. When the Roman emperors were at the height of their 
power the different nations of the empire still preserved their manners and 
customs of great diversity. Although they were subject to the same monarch 
most of the provinces were separately administered; they abounded in 
powerful and active municipalities and although the whole government of 
the empire was centered in the hands of the emperor alone and he always 
remained, upon occasions, the supreme arbiter in all matters, yet the details 
of social life and private occupations lay for the most part beyond his con- 
trol. The Emperors possessed, it is true, an immense and unchecked power 
which allowed them to gratify all their whimsical tastes and to employ for 
that purpose the whole strength of the state. They frequently abused that 
power arbitrarily to deprive their subjects of property or life; their tyranny 
was extremely onerous to the few, but it did not reach the greater number; 
it was fixed to some few main objects and neglected the rest; it was violent 
but its range was limited. 

But it would seem that, if despotism were to be established among the 
democratic nations of our days, it might assume a different character; it 
would be more extensive and more mild; it would degrade men without 
tormenting them. I do not question that in an age of instruction and equality 
like our own, sovereigns might more easily succeed in collecting all political 
power into their own hands, and might interfere more habitually and de- 
cidedly within the sphere of private interests, than any sovereigns of the 
antiquity ever could do. . . . 



294 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

/ think then, that the species of oppression by which democratic nations 
are menaced is unlike anything which ever before existed in the world; 
our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories. I am try- 
ing myself to choose an expression which will accurately convey the whole 
of the idea I have formed of it, but in vain; the old words despotism and 
tyranny are inappropriate ; the thing itself is new; and since I can not name 
it, I must attempt to define it. 

I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in 
the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable 
multitude of men all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure 
the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. . . . Above 
this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon 
itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That 
power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like 
the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare 
men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual 
childhood; it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they 
think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government will- 
ingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and arbiter of that happiness: 
it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates 
their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their in- 
heritances — -what remains but to spare them all the care of thinking and 
all the trouble of living? Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free 
agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within 
a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The 
principle of equality has prepared men for these things: it has predisposed 
men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits. 

After having successfully taken each member of the community in its 
powerful grasp and fashioned them at will the supreme power then extends 
its arm over the whole community. It covers the network of society with a 
network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which 
the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, 
to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, 
and guided: men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly 
restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy but it prevents 
existence; it does not tyrannize but it compresses, ennervates, extinguishes, 
and stupifies people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a 
flock of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the 
shepherd. . . . 

... I believe that it is easier to establish a despotic government among a 
people in which the conditions of society are equal than among any other; 
and I think that if such a government were once established among such a 
people, it would not only oppress men, but would eventually strip each of 
them of several of the highest qualities of humanity. Despotism therefore 
appears to me peculiarly to be dreaded in democratic ages. J should have 
loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am 



WORLD WAR II 295 

ready to worship it. — {Democracy in America, "Influence of democratic 
opinions and sentiments upon political society," Trans, by Henry Reeve, 
New York, 1899.) 272 

This gives, in short, a characteristic of the enemy against whom the 
United Nations have to wage a war, an enemy who is slightly less subtle 
in his methods than M. de Tocqueville dared dream. He refers twice to 
the mildness of that coming regime and at first this seems to impair the 
value of this astonishing prophecy. Neither Moscow nor Berlin excel in 
mildness, and yet de Tocqueville's "mistake" is only due to a different 
timing. He envisages the advent of the efficient ant state at a period 
when the nations of the Christian world are already thoroughly uni- 
formistic and identitarian. Such a state can — in his opinion — only come 
into existence when everybody follows the same political creed and 
shares the same taste, the same outlook on life, etc. Such conditions in 
absolute perfection are still rare and they are even more unlikely in 
historical countries with divergent traditions and class distinctions. We 
have referred to the example of the plebiscites in the hotels of Berlin 
and New York. Yet countries like the Germanies or Russia are still 
far from the perfect political uniformity of New York and therefore 
brutal force has to be applied. There is no reason why one should hesi- 
tate to believe that once the total uniformity of political thought has 
been achieved, the de Tocquevillian mildness will also come to the fore. 
It is quite possible that we shall see in thirty years a Nazi Parliament 
with ten different Nazi parties all believing in the Nazi essentials. A 
gentle, soft pressure from above, as it has been so well described in 
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and a thoroughly Nazified society 
would keep all "restless" elements in line. 273 

The Anglo-Saxon powers thus have to fight an enemy still in the 
process of transformation. This is certainly an advantage in wartime. 
And the only real potential ally in the Germanies at a time when the 
hardships of war are not strongly and generally felt will be exactly the 
"exceptional" people, those who on account of their intelligence, per- 
sonality, faith, or tradition could not have been assimilated or leveled. 
These are a minority and the sooner the belligerents realize that it is 
not the herdist, the mass man, who suffers in a superdemocratic ochloc- 
racy, but the "outstanding man," the better for them. It must be kept 
in mind that it is not the railroad conductor and the employee of the 
gas works who in a plebiscitarian dictatorship goes slowly to pieces but 



296 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

the philosopher, the writer, the sensitive, creative artist, the educator, 
the priest, who have to stand the strain, who feel the chains. It is for 
the better and braver part of these that the present crusade should be 
waged. The masses are often satisfied if they can eat, work, and sleep. 
Intellectual freedom has little meaning for them one way or the other. 

The question must clearly be faced whether this is an aristocratic or a 
democratic war ; whether one should shoulder arms in order to give free- 
dom to an aristocracy of intellect, conviction, and spirit or whether one 
has decided to die for the ballot of Herr Kunz or Herr Kraus, who may 
vote another Hitler into power if they fear for their pocketbook or regular 
employment. America may be far quicker in understanding these issues 
than the outsider is ready to believe. It is of little importance that 
America at present has less of a visible tradition than Europe and a 
smaller intellectual aristocracy, but in no country in the world is there 
such furious hunger for cultural and intellectual values, such craving for 
true personality and the dignity of the human person, such worshipful 
seeking for the beautiful things of life. America will understand. . . . 

This present war is not fought between one group of countries which 
is "enlightened" and another one which wants to "put the clock back 1 ' 
but between a coalition which stands for Liberty (and Soil) and another 
one which proclaims Equality-Identity (and Blood). It is a struggle 
between Patriotism (represented by the United Nations) and National- 
ism-Racialism (represented by the Axis). 

Such a world-wide issue can nevertheless hardly manifest itself in 
absolute, unequivocal purity. The Allied Nations in the last war fought 
against the Central Powers in the name of "Progress" versus "Reaction" ; 
today this chronological order has been reversed. It is Washington and 
London who represent the conservative trend, it is Berlin which became 
the synthesis of unbridled and uninhibited technical and biological 
"modernity." Where then stands Russia? The USSR stands on exactly 
the same spot as Imperial Russia in 1914. The Russian Emperor was, 
in World War I, the ally of the Third French Republic and of 
Liberal England. No ideological affinity then united the Winter Palace 
with the Pantheon ; and today there is hardly a rainbow bridge between 
the Kremlin, the Liberty Bell and Buckingham Palace. The war between 
the Germans and Russians was and is a people's war ; the war between 
the Axis and the Anglo-Saxons was and is a deep ideological "discussion" 
fought out by arms. There are not two, but three wars going on : one in 
the Pacific, one in the Atlantic, and a third one in the Sarmathian Plains. 



WORLD WAR II 297 

Yet while it is none too easy to understand the issues at stake in the 
present war, it is even more difficult to envisage the future if the powers 
of good will are victors in the struggle. What sort of political order 
should be established in Europe and especially in Central Europe? And 
again, what kind of higher political order should be established with the 
purpose of conferring at least a minimum of peace and comfort on the 
desperate, confused, bewildered, and misguided peoples of Europe ? These 
are two separate problems, yet they are closely interrelated. The coming 
order in Central Europe is of the utmost importance to the entire Conti- 
nent for the very simple reason that it is the heart of the western section 
of the Old World, of the European peninsula of Eurasia. And as long as 
we continue to consider the Atlantic rim of Europe as the only true and 
integral part of Christian civilization, and all countries east of the Rhine 
merely as an approximation to Asiatic "barbarism," no lasting and con- 
structive reorientation and reorganization of the war-torn Continent is 
feasible or possible. 

It will be absolutely necessary to go back courageously to old, very 
old, patterns and take at the same time precautions that a process of 
disintegration and wrong herdist reconstruction, as we have witnessed 
it in the past 300 years, will be avoided. It is a solid First Reich or 
something similar to it which must be revived. 

Yet there seems to be one school among western "statesmen" which 
wants to make good the mistakes of 1919 by re-creating the Austro- 
Hungarian monarchy of old and carving up the Germanies. The dangerous 
aspect of such an enterprise lies in the fact that this arrangement could 
easily be carried out once the Third Reich has broken down. There would 
be then, more than ever, an extreme dislike for the Prussianized Germans 
in Austria, and German national sentiments would be at a low ebb in 
Vienna and the Alps. The Germans themselves, after a crushing defeat, 
would become the victims of one of their typical fits of bitter melancholy, 
self-denunciation, self-hatred, and apathy. All those who would come 
under the rule of indigenous princes and princelets would be happy to 
be at least not under Polish or direct Allied control. Yet what would 
happen in another twenty or thirty years? We know from experience 
that no peace arrangement is lasting if it relies on brutal force except, 
of course, in the case of total extirpation of the conquered race. 

The time would come when the individual German rulers — or petty par- 
liaments — would be looked at as servile agents of a hated group of alien 



298 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

enemies ; a new wave of hitherto unknown nationalistic ideologies would 
sweep the Germanies, a new Hitler might arise and unite the separated 
countries in a new, terrible, centralistic, and herdist concentration. There 
is little one could do against such a process short of new bloodshed ; and 
the military help granted by the Allies to their helpmates inside the 
Germanies would change the contempt for the petty monarchs and other 
representatives of the bad cause to boiling hatred resulting in perpetual 
tension. A similar situation might even arise in Austria, where some un- 
easiness for the suffering of the once so hated blood brothers in the 
divided Germanies would revive the always latent German sentiment. 

It would be quite incorrect to attribute German sentiment in Austria 
to a frantic herdism on account of the common language — which, after 
all, is also the "uniting bond" between Yorkshire and Liberia. There 
are undoubtedly such primitive Austrians who base their German feel- 
ings on herdist principles only. There are others — equally shortsighted 
— who oppose this herdism by just another one, emphasizing the "divid- 
ing differences" in the cultural and sentimental domain. But there is 
also a minority — and minorities often are "aristocracies" — which still 
cultivates the tradition of the First Reich. These do not respect in the 
Habsburgs the rulers of Austria but the descendants of the emperors, 
who did not develop that amazing inferiority complex toward the Prus- 
sians that some "Little Austrians" have nursed. Nor could it be a 
difficult task to dominate these fiery, German-speaking Slavs who are 
such excellent fighters in uniform but such docile subjects in mufti. 

The tradition of the First Reich is far older, greater, and nobler than 
the Imperial Austrian tradition dating back only to 1806, and although 
not derived from the French Revolution, yet still of the same age if not 
younger. To compare the First Reich with the Austrian Imperial idea 
means to compare the dry and worn-out bureaucratism of Francis Joseph 
with the universality and knightly grandeur of Maximilian I, Charles V, 
Ferdinand II, or Maria Theresa. 

The main argument for a one-sided revival of the Danubian Monarchy, 
or a South-German "Catholic" solution, is usually based upon a deep 
mistrust toward the Prussians (who, incidentally, must be re-educated in 
the European manner and tradition). Uniting Southern Germany with 
little Austria or even with a greater Austrian empire, leaving the North 
independent under the leadership of Berlin, a city with less cultural 
tradition than Baltimore or Charleston, would establish a focus for 
herdism, an almost purely Protestant platform for the basest phenomena 



WORLD WAR II 299 

of technicism, nationalism, militarism, or perhaps even an extremely 
apt steppingstone for a new type of Bolshevism in Central Europe. Yet 
northeastern Germany must be placed under the benevolent but never- 
theless methodical control by the rest of Germany. People in the north- 
east (and this would include Saxony and Thuringia) must be trained 
again to enjoy their meager personalities and to value originality above 
uniformity. 

The New-Old Reich has to be a realm with a Catholic majority and a 
Catholic leadership. 274 American and British non-Catholics must remem- 
ber that Protestantism in the Germanies stood for all the ideas which 
they so intensely dislike. Even such a severe and implacable critic of 
Catholicism as Dean Inge had to acknowledge — in an article written 
seven years ago in the Evening Standard — that the British get on best 
with the Bavarians and the Austrians on account of their "Gothic" spirit. 
There is very little of this spirit in the military training fields of Tempel- 
hof or the factories of Herr Krupp von Bohlen. What cultured Britisher, 
American, or Netherlander did not feel more at home in Vienna than 
in Berlin, in the Tyrol than in Pomerania, in Cologne than in Stettin? 
It is exactly the cultured spirit of the Catholic Germanies which must 
be helped by the Allies to regain its old and dominating position. One 
must pray to God (and hope against hope, cynics would say) that the 
men of Washington and London in responsible positions will know what 
they have to do when they have an opportunity to act and to decide. 

Modern wars end necessarily with some sort of revolution on the side 
of the defeated ; a government which has emphasized over a long period 
that it was fighting a righteous crusade cannot possibly sit down at the 
same table with the enemy, who during the hostilities was depicted as 
the very personification of Satan. It must either abdicate or will be swept 
away by a revolt — a revolt of the masses, a revolt of the army, or a 
rebellion of the upper classes, in order to make peace arrangements 
possible* No Nazi and no member of the British parties, as we know 
them, could ever sit together in conference. Francis Joseph could say 
in 1859, "I lost a battle and I pay with a province." Such a "traitor- 
ous" attitude would be unthinkable today. Progressive nations have 
to bleed to death in their wars. Rulers felt that they had to be sparing 
with the lives of their subjects, but leaders have the marvelous excuse 
that they are nothing but executors of the general will. 



* Guglielmo Ferrero describes the necessity for a revolution as a terminating point 
of a war in his volume Peace and War, New York, 1933, pp. 60-61. 



300 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

If and when the Third Reich goes the way of all flesh, it may be that 
the revolt will be engineered by the upper classes or the army. If the 
rising comes from the lower classes, then it will be inspired by none of 
the better known leftist ideologies. It will be a revolution with anar- 
chistic leanings, a revolution for revolution's sake. Such a situation can- 
not last forever. There is no such thing as a revolution in permanence. 
Order will be asked for and we stand under no illusion that a revival 
of the First Reich will be extremely popular from the outset. The lower 
classes may even ignore the very meaning of a Sacrum Imperium, yet a 
country after a defeat, tired of a war, is like wax and it depends largely 
upon those who enact the great historic return whether they will make 
a success of the restoration or a failure like the Stuarts and Bourbons. 

Any revival of nineteenth-century Parliamentarianism should also be 
out of the question. It would merely give the mob another chance to 
vote for another Holy Roller with a Chaplin moustache. The New First 
Reich must also be necessarily based on monarchical principles. This 
is the only way we can avoid the dangers of parliamentarianism without 
anchored safeguards in the heart of Europe, the danger whose real name 
is "party dictatorship." 275 Neither, of course, should the absolutistic 
monarchy of the seventeenth century be revived. In some respects the 
governmental forms have to be taken from medieval patterns without 
its feudal elements. An opinionating body of a corporative character 
freely elected is not less necessary than a first-rate administrative official- 
dom. But all these externals will work only if society itself is transformed 
on personalistic and hierarchical lines by a revolution from above. Per- 
sonality, person, and personalism must again become the keynote of 
European culture and quality triumph over quantity. 276 But all this is 
possible only if a fundamental change, a real ixerdvoca of all Europe takes 
place. The love for the "nearer home," the engere Heimat, must again be 
cultivated and supplant the senseless worship of impressive "national" 
statistics. It is self-evident that these changes cannot be imposed without 
a far-reaching re-education of the masses and a true revolution "from 
above." Already Constantin Frantz, the apostle of German federalism, 
emphasized that true federalism presupposed a change of culture, of 
education, of mentality.* 

There is nothing inferior or degrading in "local patriotism," so much 
frowned upon or ridiculed by the mammoth nationalism of the nineteenth 

* Deutschland und der Foderalismus, Stuttgart-Berlin, 1921, pp. 36-37. 



WORLD WAR II 301 

and twentieth centuries. All these revolutionary changes (revolutionary 
only for the urban elements and not the peasantry) must be based upon 
the right answer of the great, fundamental question : "What is man ?" 

It is also the very order of "consciences" and allegiances which must 
be reversed in a revolutionary way. (Without this revolution no funda- 
mental reconstruction of the Old World is possible.) Today to belong to 
a people of eighty millions means "everything"; to be a member of a 
community, "little" ; to be a human being — "nothing." Our worship of 
quantity subordinates man to society, state, nation, race, which, after 
all, must all remain abstractions which may or may not be legitimate. 

It cannot be emphasized often enough that the abolition of parlia- 
mentary government does not mean that the dignity of man will not be 
respected any more. Neither can it be maintained that the insipid count- 
ing of noses, which degraded the human person to a mere voting animal,* 
was a personalist feature of the past one hundred years. A freer at- 
mosphere should liberate the people from the control of their neighbors, 
and laws will be enacted guaranteeing the civil liberties. The defense of 
these essential liberties {whose importance for the well-being of a self- 
respecting nation cannot be overemphasized) should be vested in the 
person of the monarch who is also the guardian of the constitution. In 
the religious ceremony of the coronation the monarch will have to promise 
to watch over the constitution, the civil rights, and liberties under an 
oath given to God and the nation. 

The constitution also provides for an independent judiciary system 
and for a supreme court. There will be all due liberty of the press, 
of speech, and organization. Everybody will be free to criticize the 
political decisions, the legislation, the administration. The intolerance 
toward criticism is the certain sign of characteriological inferiority.** It 



* The Germans call him Stitnmvieh. 

** The greatest mistakes ecclesiastic authorities committed at various times were 
prompted by a wrong evaluation of the liberty of thought. They naturally never com- 
mitted the monumental error of "liberal" relativists to despair in the respective existence 
of truth and untruth; if Catholicism is right Protestantism must be wrong and vice 
versa. The reason why untruth can ever be tolerated (tolerated, not accepted) must be 
found in the mysterious laws of thoughts and ideas, not in the relativism of complacent 
agnostics; neither is Truth able to take care of herself (as some optimists invariably 
believe) nor does Truth thrive under eternal vigilance, protection, and a system of 
enforcement. Truth then degenerates to commonplace, it loses its appeal, its inner 
dynamism, its luster and brilliancy (for which it needs a dark background). Human 
beings are then finally brought to resent truth and the forbidden fruits of untruth begin 
to taste sweeter than ever. 

TJremy is the result of the degeneration of the glomeruli, tiny agents which transports 



302 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

is the masses and the mass man that cannot bear contradiction. (Hitler 
is a very good example of the monologizing "one way" mobmaster.) The 
idea of "His Majesty's most loyal opposition" is as old as monarchy itself. 
The leader of the opposition in the British parliament does not receive a 
salary for nothing. The first paid (artificial) opposition were the jesters at 
the royal courts of Europe. Their cruel criticisms were borne with equa- 
nimity. But on the other hand, the laymen, the masses of innocent ig- 
norants, will have to come to terms with the experts. Everybody has 
a moral right to criticize a house, but the building of a house can never- 
theless be trusted only to an architect. And politics are an art as difficult, 
and as public, as architecture. 

Provisions will also have to be taken to prevent the bureaucracy from 
becoming a soulless, arrogant caste. The officials remain, in spite of the 
fact that they are not executors of the "general will," but independent 
experts, basically servants of the people and advisers of the monarch. 
The opinionating, corporative parliament which represents naked inter- 
ests and not parties can protest the cast and proposals of the legislative- 
administrative officialdom ; dependent upon the nature of the protested 
object, it is either the supreme court or the monarch with his crown 
council (the government) that are going to act as arbiters and to decide 
to what extent public opinion or group interests should be taken into 
consideration or overruled. 

The parliaments of yesterday represented vague agglomerations of 
political "persuasions" and the very system is based upon the belief that 
administration and legislation are easily separable elements. Yet they are 
not. Still there are many people who will not agree with this statement. 2 "<z 
Legislation and administration are like architect and contractor. Yet the 
architect is the learned expert, while the contractor is only a skilled 
foreman of workers. The old parliamentary system put the experts in 
the administration and the foreman in the designing job. It is an order 
which in Europe could not last. 

The preceding statements seem to betray an extraordinary faith in 

the poisons of the body to the kidneys whence they are eliminated. Once the glomeruli 
cease to function the body dies of an inner poisoning. The Middle Ages died from such 
a uremic process. People remained intra muros through indifference or out of fear, 
heretical ideas spread because they had the mystical magnetism of the appeal from the 
tree in paradise. Error has certainly no right to exist; if it is tolerated it should certainly 
not be for its own sake, but for the sake of its poor bearer and for the sake of 
Truth which will shine in a light more brilliant if its sinister counterpart has not been 
meticulously eradicated. 



WORLD WAR II 303 

the Germans.* Yet all these questions are not questions of faith but of 
feasibility and expediency. It is a geographical fact that the Germans 
live in the heart of Europe and there is every indication that they have 
a "central" character. The Nazi claim that Germany alone can be the 
point of gravity of Europe is perfectly justified, but it is equally true 
that their ideology is the very last which could facilitate this mission. 
It is one of the fausses id&es claires that Europe can be united only by 
conquest and the National Socialists fell for it. Yet it is equally true 
that Europe cannot "escape" the Germans and the Germans will never 
and can never give up to formulate a Reichsidee, an imperial idea. If 
this idea is spiritual, Europe may benefit from it, if the idea is mate- 
rialistic, Europe will suffer atrociously. One cannot be happy and healthy 
if one's heart is diseased. 

The Germans (like the Jews) are in their ubiquity everywhere in 
Europe. The thrones of England, Portugal, Norway, Denmark, Holland,** 
Belgium, Russia,*** Bulgaria, Rumania, Greece, Hungary have been 
occupied by Germans. Fragments of Germans live as far as Reval 
and the Alsace, Heligoland and the Lower Volga. One cannot escape 
them. To omit them in calculations is folly. And to think that they 
will calm down and become "ordinary people" betrays ignorance. They 
must have a mission which is not materialistic and a spiritual mission 
cannot be invented on a green table. It can only be a revival or a 
continuation from past memories. The Fourth Reich will be the con- 
tinuation of the First Reich or it will be thoroughly and restlessly 
diabolic.**** 



* It is interesting to see where a consequential belief in "democratic" principles finally 
led to. Professor Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster, an ardent German "democrat," arrived at 
an almost complete denial of his own nation, a blank despair about its misdeeds, and 
a furious denunciation of its recent aberrations. He is today not only an exile from 
Germany but even a voluntary exile of the German people. No German Conservative, 
however, anti-Nazi, will share his opinion; for a Christian Conservative, the masses of 
every country are made up by more or less goodhearted and more or less well-inten- 
tioned people without any sense of political responsibility and a total ignorance of 
political facts. To accuse nations (not leaders or governments) is the hallmark of the 
demo-nationalist of the nineteenth or twentieth centuries; it leads to endless hatreds, 
feelings of revenge, misunderstandings, and frictions. It is the surest guarantee for per- 
petual mass wars. 

** House of Nassau-Oranje ; Princess Juliana's father was Prince of Mecklenburg. 

*** House of Holstein-Gottorp (not Romanov) since the days of Peter III. 

**** The relatively soundest proposition of what to do with Germany after the war 
had been given by Captain Alan Graham, M.P., in After the War (a symposium of peace 
aims edited by William Teeling, London, 1940). Captain Graham knows at least all 
the premises, but his deductions are influenced by the fact that he had to reckon with 
France as a partner on the conference table at the time when he wrote his essay. 



304 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

Against these proposals most progressive people will bring up the 
objection that one cannot "turn the clock back." This is only partly 
true. A photographic copy of the past is impossible. Nobody would 
advise a woman to dress in the style of 1926, but it is nowadays quite 
smart to imitate the fashions of 1860. If one turns the clock back it 
must be done in a dynamic, spectacular, and breath-taking way. What 
is true of sartorial vogues is equally true of political fashions. Nothing 
could be more childish than to turn Europe's clock back to 1926. The 
supine effort to oppose National Socialism {or communism) with "democ- 
racy" is as hopeless as it would have been 150 years ago to combat the 
radical Jacobins with some sort of flabby Girondism. In a struggle 
against a revolutionary idea it is only possible to use ideological elements 
which are a thousand times more radical, or adopt principles which 
represent a total reaction against them. (Every effort to fight a certain 
stage of a revolution with its elements of a previous stage would be 
thoroughly abortive.) Yet neither Washington nor London can, ought, 
and will be more progressive than Berlin (by advocating, for instance, 
the sterilization of all men and women with dark eyes), and thus the 
only alternative remaining is to have recourse to a sound and coura- 
geous medievalism. 2 "* 

We have to give thanks to the Holy Ghost that the Atlantic Charter 
did not repeat the Wilsonian nonsense of a world safe for democracy, 
and that the two aristocrats who met off Newfoundland pledged their 
countries merely to the defeat of National Socialism and the establish- 
ment of forms of government appealing to the nobler sides of human 
nature. A definite danger lurks in the possibility of the "progressive" 
elements of England and America increasing unduly their influence 
mainly at the time of the peace conferences. It will then be the Girondists 
of London, Washington (and Paris) who will win this war technically, 
yet a revolutionary war technically won and morally lost is in reality a 
total defeat and nothing else but a preparation for World War III. 

The present war is a revolutionary war, more so than World War I. 
European history since the French Revolution is largely a series of 
revolutions, reactions, counterrevolutions, and counterreactions, where 
naked and veiled ideologies clash in furious attacks. The tragic aspect of 
the present situation lies in the fact that in spite of the many valuable 
ideas afloat in Anglo-Saxon countries there is very little of the Catholic 
and Continental tradition, very little of pure spirituality and conservative 
mentality. In the Catholic countries themselves the positive tradition is 



WORLD WAR II 305 

far richer and personal culture more Catholic, but the respective politi- 
cal machineries are either hopelessly pagan or even more hopelessly 
compromised from the (not yet entirely unimportant) point of view of 
honor. Catholic government in Europe is confined to the balc&o aberto 
sobre o infinito* — Portugal. Franco's foreign policy has until now kept 
neutral. Everything else has been crushed, destroyed, wiped out. Thus 
all the hope rests with a mixture of Canterbury, Wall Street, the London 
Times, Serbian guerrillas, the foreign office, the Eight Points of the 
Atlantic Charter, and the Moderator of the Free Churches in Britain. In 
such a situation the Catholic's duty is primarily to pray to the Holy 
Ghost that he may enlighten those who will be responsible for the order 
in Europe after an Allied victory. 

Not only a new order in Central Europe but also a new order in 
Christendom is necessary. It would be a waste of time to discuss any real 
order outside of Christendom, because such a thing is genuinely incon- 
ceivable. We have spoken already about the defects of the old League of 
Nations (p. 152 ff.). It is evident that only nations accepting the basic 
theistic principles can be members. A League of Nations without a com- 
mon positive creed could never accomplish anything worth while — just 
like a parliament divided by basic philosophies. The only uniting bond 
in the old league was the vague philosophizing of "modern man" — the 
"good pagan" — who dislikes wars because they are expensive and spread 
death — and death, we must not forget, is the supreme catastrophe for 
the atheist. A new League of Nations should be a regular congress of 
the Christian monarchs and heads of nations with their ministers in a 
place of great and ancient Christian tradition — in Aix-la-Chapelle, in 
Rome, in Canterbury, in Jerusalem. A league of the very heads of the 
states will also be more efficient than a league of mere representatives 
of easily changeable parliamentary governments. The conventions of the 
kings, the emperor, and the presidents of the few republics would also 
have a greater symbolic effect upon the nations who will increasingly 
feel the uniting power of Christendom. 

Last not least — the most important feature of a well-established and 
(nationally as well as internationally) recognized monarchy should not 
be forgotten — legitimacy. Without legitimacy it is impossible to imagine 
the binding power of agreements, of stability, and peace. 278 

It will be possible that a few flag-waving mob masters will protest 

* "The balcony opening on the infinite," overlooking the sea. 



306 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

against their "unpatriotic" monarchs and the "new clericalism." But 
outside the terra flrma of Christian principles we are nothing else but a 
pack of hungry and greedy wolves who devour each other in times of 
hunger and emergency ; no "Sunday meditation" of any modern "Ethical 
Society" will be able to change that. Europe as a coherent and cooper- 
ating continent can only be rebuilt on the same philosophical and re- 
ligious doctrine, and the Cross is, after all, the sole uniting reality between 
Iceland and Sicily, between Portugal and Finland. The blood relation- 
ship of monarchs in that union is simply an additional material ligament, 
and their status of anointed Christian monarchs a further spiritual 
bond. 279 

There are yet still a few dreamers who want to restore a human order 
along the old lines of ochlocracy, mass terror, anthropocentrism, and a 
humanitarian pan-Fascism. In 1940 a book was put on the market, writ- 
ten by a few charlatans and a couple of men who, one would be tempted 
to say, should know better — the City of Man. The title itself betrayed 
the anthropocentricity of the whole program and there is little doubt 
that the title meant it to be in contradiction to St. Augustine's Civitas 
Dei. The confusion in some pages should not mislead the reader in under- 
estimating the symptomatic significance of that slender volume. If the 
writers say that: "Democracy is nothing more and nothing less than 
humanism in theocracy and rational theocracy in universal humanism,"* 
they only testify to the fact that they overhastily consulted Webster's 
dictionary. But slogans like "Everything within humanity, nothing 
against humanity, nothing outside humanity"** show where the sources of 
their ideas lie; here we find a shameless adaptation of Mussolini's 
"Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, everything for 
the state." When the writers permit the existence of religious teachings 
in so far as they represent "Vernaculars of the democratic religion" they 
imitate Hitler, who dreams of making Christianity subservient to the 
state and its dynamic ideology, or Napoleon, who regretted his "conces- 
sions" to the Church not less than his illustrious epigone. 280 The sacred 
conviction that man is the center of the cosmos will always lead to the 
creation of ideologies which may differ in name yet show the same 
characteristics, the same tendencies, the same inhuman humanitarianism. 
The City of Man proves this without the slightest doubt. 281 

It certainly will not be easy to demand from victorious nations, as well 



* Page 33. 
** Page 34. 



WORLD WAR II 307 

as from those who have suffered at the hands of the Germans in the 
most ignominious way, that they conclude a peace without material gains 
and without the element of revenge. When the next peace will have to 
be signed, the great western cities may lie in ashes and the masses of 
the people will be imbued with a terrific hatred against a nation which 
had spread or provoked such horrible destruction. 

Grant God that the Anglo-Saxon nations will be led at that time by 
statesmen, and not by politicians, who will have the honesty and the 
will power to dissociate themselves from that great anonymous monster, 
Public Opinion. 282 They will be asked nothing more, nothing less than 
to assist the German people in finding their better self again, and with 
Christian charity to aid them in building a lasting house. 

In this specific case we have to remember the Latin proverb : fiat ius- 
titia pereat mundus. It is not naked justice in a legalistic sense or 
righteousness only which can help Europe, but wisdom, knowledge, and 
charity. 283 If a rigid and formal justice be applied, the doom of Europe 
would actually be sealed.* 

Yet here we cannot omit a consideration of the moral order. We have 
to ask ourselves whether the Atlantic nations would have acted more 
bravely under similar circumstances than the Germans. Would they 
have offered more determined resistance if they had fallen into the 
hands of powerful ochlocratic dictators — or would they have kept 
their mouths shut, trembling for their individual, physical, and financial 
security ? It is highly probable that the fear of poverty, the fear of death 
and of physical torture would have prevented any active resistance in 
the great urban centers. Courage is, at any rate, a rare virtue. 284 Yet 
determined small minorities can easily overpower the modern state and 
the modern city. Five thousand determined men could completely par- 
alyze the ten million inhabitants of New York by blasting the gas works, 
electricity plants, and the water supply. There is, under such circum- 
stances, no other "hope" for the straphanger than to get a mild, charitable 
master instead of a brutal tyrant. 

Yet the demands on the victors unquestionably remain extreme in their 
nature. The alternatives are either an angelic charity or final doom in 
World War III. There is no other choice. Situations where a human 
person can choose only between two extremes sometimes do arise. A 
crusader caught by the "Assassins" and asked to renounce his faith or 

* Cf. Gabor de Ronay's article in the Catholic World, September, 1941. 



308 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

to die under the most terrible tortures had of a sudden the sole choice of 
either becoming a great saint-martyr or else offending God beyond 
imagination. In such a case there is no medium between mortal sin and 
supreme sanctity. And if the United Nations win they will be faced by 
a similar alternative. 

There is also the problem of the arrangements to be made outside of 
the Germanies. It matters very little what the local majorities of the 
Central and Eastern Europeans think at the present moment or at the 
time of the termination of the war. Of all fantasmagories ever invented, 
the "self-determination of nations" is one of the most fatal propositions. 
"Self-determination" led to National Socialism, "self-determination" was 
responsible for the most fantastic borders ever conceived in Europe. 
Plebiscites are, after all, nothing but lay opinions based on mere likes 
and dislikes. They rarely bring happy solutions. 

Neither will it be easy to engineer a lasting restoration, even if it is 
based on a great tradition. Restorations were singularly unsuccessful in 
history, yet there is no reason why one should succumb to a historical 
fatalism. The memory of Hitler will doubtless cause certain difficulties. 
It is the impending great tragedy written all over his face which partly 
explains the magnetism of his personality. It would be a dangerous illu- 
sion to underestimate his present popularity even among people who 
heartily detest the system he represents. There is little doubt that the 
downfall of National Socialism will bring about a low in the Hitler cult, 
but nevertheless, after his death, his person will be surrounded by the 
same strange, mystic glory which was spun around the great Corsican. 
Ignorant people probably will continue to see in him their hero, who 
was finally betrayed, sold, overpowered by his enemies. Hitler will be- 
come another Michael Kohlhaas, a German Pugatshov, the dreamer and 
schemer surging from the depths of the nation and reaching madly for 
the sun. . . . 

One should certainly not have too many illusions about the results of 
the changes brought by a new-old order; it will never bring a millen- 
nium of perfect human happiness. Human life is always and under all 
circumstances a march through a valley of tears. Bossuet's words, "La vie 
d'un chrStien n'est qu'un piUrinage ; notre domicile est ailleurs," should 
always be borne in mind. Yet the traditional order may be instrumental 
in restoring the dignity of the human beings that have suffered so bitterly 
under all sorts of "progressive" systems, from Robespierre to Dewey. 
History since the Crucifixion has become predominantly the record of a 



WORLD WAR II 309 

chain of attacks and defenses against and for human dignity and per- 
sonality. This human dignity is fundamentally connected with the God- 
man who suffered the most humiliating death on the martyr-instrument 
for common criminals, but who rose triumphantly from the grave. Thus 
the cross became the joyful symbol for man, that image of God. Who- 
soever attacks the Cross also attacks mankind. The powers of darkness 
who attack and degrade the human personality and its sacred uniqueness, 
are also out to deny and to eradicate the Cross. 

There are forces engaged in this war which have adopted the diabolical 
plan to put the docile ant in place of the Image of God possessing free 
will. These forces must be defeated. Yet the issue and the goal must be 
clearly before all our eyes. There is not only an external front in this 
war — a front with trenches, a front in the air, on the sea, in the deserts 
of Africa, and the jungles of Asia, but also an inner front. We must not 
forget that for every right-thinking man or woman on the wrong side, 
there is a wrong-thinking person on this side. Thoughts, ideas, philoso- 
phies, religions have no clearly denned geographical borders. 

If those with the wrong conceptions already living in a pre-Nazi stage 
of development will get the upper hand, then the war will be morally 
lost as a foregone conclusion. If the goal of Britain and America would 
actually be a conglomeration of "making Europe safe for democracy," 
"economical competition," "decent business dealing," "more colonies, cash, 
and a return to Geneva," then we better all go to bed, switch out the light, 
and pull the sheets over our heads. Neither with such "democracy" nor 
with nationalism or any other herdism can we survive. A supranational 
order with material safeguards must be established. The words of 
Myerezhkovski, written after the last war, must be constantly 
remembered : 

What is the meaning of the world-wide catastrophe, by which mankind 
is now affected, the political, economical, social and cultural destruction of 
Europe? Why are there after the world war no victors and no vanquished? 
Why is even victory worse than defeat? 

Russian Bolshevism and Polish Messianism answers these questions in a 
seemingly identical way; from the category of nationalistic existence man- 
kind, to save itself, must evolve inevitably into a form of supranational 
existence. Once the nations lived freely in the national form of their existence 
and developed their nationality; now they die and suffocate in them. These 
forms were once diapers, but now they have become shrouds. Mankind will 
either be buried in them in order to decay or it will throw them off like 
Lazarus rising from the dead. 



Ill 

ODDS AND ENDS 



"The genuine Whig was a conservative, for he rested 

his claims on the ancient Constitution of the Kingdom." 

— A. Carthill, The Legacy of Liberalism. 

Political concepts do often have paradoxical elements in them. In the 
realm of pure logic two contradictory statements have no place side by 
side if they claim both to conform to the truth. Yet nations have para- 
doxical characters and survive; constitutions have paradoxical and con- 
tradictory provisions and harmonize if not in theory yet in practice. The 
rigidity of a powerful officialdom and liberty (relative liberty, of course) 
are not incompatible. Neither is it true that a power unchecked has a 
"natural" tendency to ask for more and more prerogatives until it de- 
velops into absolute tyranny. Fathers, for instance, do not increase (or 
try to increase) their hold upon their children from year to year, neither 
do teachers or professors become more tyrannical with advancing age. 
The automatic desire for more power is only apparent in children, primi- 
tives, people of low character or intellect ; for the superior man, power is 
like a cross, duty a burden, responsibility an obligation. And it is usually 
the uncertainty of power which creates in the people wielding it, the 
desire to increase it. The man who has his powers guaranteed will more 
rarely abuse them than the man to whom prerogatives are given only for 
a short while. The psychological reasons for such an attitude are obvious. 
We need not discuss them. 

As we have accepted the machine age with its implications we must 
also accede to the most important implication: regulation — regulation 
by a "bureaucracy." Technicism is a monster like a tiger which one might 
keep like a pet as long as it is young, but when this beast comes of age a 

310 



ODDS AND ENDS 311 

muzzle is necessary, if not a cage. There is not the slightest doubt that 
social legislation is an insidious thing and a further step toward artifi- 
ciality and dependency, 285 but what can one do in the dangerous stone 
and brick deserts of the big cities, what can one do in this age of birth 
control, when old people can hardly rely on a numerous progeny for 
support. The "organic" alternative of enforced conception through coer- 
cive laws will scarcely bring more liberty. 

The bright side in the establishment of a good civil service would be 
the establishment of a new (and if we are lucky) competent and clean- 
handed aristocracy. 288 One must not believe with Carthill that an 
aristocracy, once dead, cannot be revived again. 287 But one thing seems 
quite certain that there is not great hope in the United States of a revital- 
ization of the present aristocracy which is, with a few noble exceptions, 
too deeply imbued with the mammonistic spirit. The post 1850 element 
is too strong. This new administrative aristocracy must be carefully built 
up from new elements which ought to be integrated regardless of their 
social background. Quality should be the only criterion. And all pre- 
cautions should be taken that this new class retains its elasticity which 
distinguished the aristocracy of Britain and America, always so willing 
to absorb deserving, valuable new elements.* 

A "bureaucracy" (an officialdom of high accomplishment) is naturally 
disliked by an ochlocratic society which prefers to believe in the success 
of the amateur and the divine inspirations of the "average man." 288 But 
the process of (organically co-ordinated) specialization and the final 
victory of quality over quantity can only be postponed but not 
delayed forever. It is one of the great ironies of modern, ochlocratic 
civilization that it annihilates its own primeval forms. Banking, manu- 
facturing, trading, and industrialism which helped to destroy the priv- 
ileges of the nobility and clergy and furthered the cause of leveling and 
collectivization finally created a small "managerial" group which may 
be the aristocracy of tomorrow.** 



* In the next volume we will discuss the functions and limitations of such 
a "bureaucracy." There is a constant danger that control and co-ordinated planning 
degenerates into a form closely resembling State socialism. The final result is totali- 
tarianism, State omnipotency and the total loss of individual liberty and independence. 
This trend finds curiously enough many supporters among the professional anti-Fascists 
who see in Fascism and Nazism not an enemy but heretical competitors. It would be 
pathetic if the United Nations would defeat German national socialism and become 
victims of various homemade forms of the same malady. This danger is greater in 
Britain than here. (Cf. P. F. Drucker, The Future of Industrial Man (New 
York, 1942.) 

** See James Burnham, The Managerial Revolution (New York, 1941). 



312 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

It is then natural that the nation should look up to their legislators and 
administrators who are part of the nation yet should have risen to their 
positions, thanks to their intelligence, industry, and achievements, and 
not due to their popularity.* There should be a certain pietas (respectful 
love, in the Latin sense) which should exist between those in power and 
office and those profiting from his efforts. This feeling must be mutual. 
It is more easily developed in monarchies where one and the same fam- 
ily rules a country for centuries and traditions are added to a personal 
sentiment. There is something slightly shocking and undignified in 
seeing the people in the cinema booing their President; one feels there 
must be something wrong with the popular concept of the office. 
It is odd that every servant who had served well and faithfully 
can hope to be retained, and every employee would be outraged if on 
principle one would "give him the sack" after a couple of years. Not so 
the President. He is suspected eo ipso of becoming, after a couple of 
years, a potential tyrant and the absolute belief in the absolute corrupt- 
ing effect of power or of the public office is apparent. But as only the 
inferior man is corrupted by power (the Church elects for life the 
Supreme Vicar of Christ), the suspicion is implicitly expressed that the 
President is a man of minor character. One of the main reasons for the 
lowering of the general respect for the office of the President may lie in 
the fact that the modus of his election has been considerably "demo- 
cratized." We have still the fiction of electors and it is still possible that 
a minority of votes determines who is going to be President; but since 
the days of Andrew Jackson the electors have ceased to function like an 
independent conclave and today they feel themselves bound to vote for 
the candidate.** A monarch on the other hand is not chosen or created ; 
he is born into his office. He is a king, begotten so by his parents (cum 
auxilio Dei), and thus a "fatality" and nobody's free choice. He may be 
popular or unpopular ; nobody is responsible for him. 

It is humanly often more agreeable to be under a completely unpopular 
king than under a man who is the neighbor's choice and the representa- 
tive of a hostile political philosophy. Thus a President represents legally 
the nation, i.e., the citizens. A traditional king represented a country 



* "Party and reason are incompatible," says Geoffrey Bourne courageously in his 
small book War, Politics and Emotion (New York, 1941). The same work contains a 
perspicacious analysis of expert knowledge and the democratic process, but it suffers 
from the usual misconceptions about Germany which impair its value. 

** Here is in many other respects it would be wise to consider the intentions of 
the Founding Fathers. 



ODDS AND ENDS 313 

and not a nation. The king of France was "France" and the king of 
Denmark just "Denmark." Only at a later historical period do we get 
such plebiscitarian dynasties as the "kings of the Belgians" or the "czars 
of the Bulgars." Hitler is similarly the "leader of the German people" 
and that makes it worse. Paradoxically as it sounds, liberties are always 
more threatened by "leaders" than by "rulers." 

If the proverbial man of the planet Mars would come to this earth and 
inquire about the difference between "leader" and "ruler" he would learn 
that "rulers" are strange people who dressed in ermine, wore crowns, 
married foreign women, kept strictly to themselves, and had the inclina- 
tion to administer the country without asking the people about their 
wishes. A "leader," on the other hand, he would be told, is a regular 
fellow in a simple uniform who embodies his nation, who tries desperately 
to create by propaganda complete unison between his ideas and the 
people. A leader, he might hear, was a local boy who made good, who 
spoke everybody's language, who never traveled abroad and disliked 
titles and royal paraphernalia. Our man from Mars would probably utter 
his delight with the institution of leaders but in practice, he would soon 
learn, the individual's advantage lay the other way round. If somebody 
had a quarrel during the Middle Ages with a monarch it was an affair 
between him and his ruler. If one has a "fight" with a president one not 
only opposes him personally but more than 50 per cent of one's fellow 
citizens who voted for him and are — politically — his kinsmen. It is 
even worse, and more dangerous, if one attacks a leader 289 who is the 
very personification of the masses; 290 in that case one is up against the 
whole mob and becomes automatically a "traitor"; not only the police 
will be on one's heels, but the organized and enthusiastic masses and 
that is the end of all individuality and of all liberty. 291 

The European tradition in government demanded a separate head of 
the state and another one for the government. The head of the govern- 
ment was always exposed to criticism. The head of the state was sacro- 
sanct. In republics he was elected by the parliaments,* in monarchies it 
was the ruler himself. And the strength of the ruler lay in the fact that 
he belonged to no party, no race, no class. 292 He was, as we emphasized 
it, of mixed racial descent. He might favor temporarily one party or the 
other but he owed allegiance to none. A president, even an ideal one, is 



* Germany was the only country in Europe after 1919 where the President was elected 
by the whole people. There is little doubt that Hindenburg would not have been elected 
if the question would have been put before the Reichstag instead of before the masses. 



314 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

usually the member of a party, the representative of a mere majority, a 
definite member of a definite class. All that hampers, destroys, and can- 
cels the element of pietas. A monarchy has the advantage that it con- 
tains pietas as well as love. To make such postulates is not ridiculous 
sentimentality ; there is no worth-while thing in this world (or the other) 
without love and to build our existence and our society upon mere laws 
and regulations is inhuman. Only an explosive motor or a locomotive 
functions under physical and chemical laws. Society and state should be 
much more than a functional institution. . . . 

The man who can sway the masses is ordinarily their embodiment. The 
enthusiasm of the masses for him is then in most cases only a love of 
themselves. In the framework of a megalopolitan civilization such a man 
ought to belong to the middle classes. He should be a symbol of average- 
ness, joviality, strength, and success. If America would have been really 
as ochlocratic as some people maintain, President Roosevelt would not 
have had a chance to defeat Mr. Willkie in the last elections. But the 
romantic sentiment as well as the craving for security of the helpless 
urban masses worked the miracle; the Hudson Valley Squire triumphed 
over the "local boy who made good." (And it may be that the southern 
votes for Mr. Roosevelt had a deeper symbolic value than just the age-old 
protest against northern Republicanism.) 

Yet the case of Hitler is more complicated than all that. He is not 
only an "embodiment" or a "personification," but he has also a demo- 
niacal quality which is lacking either in Mussolini or Stalin.* 

Goethe in his Dichtung und Wahrheit (Book XX) described with 
various exaggerations a man of his type when he wrote: 

The demoniacal element has the most terrifying aspects if it is strongly 
represented in a human being. I had during my lifetime the occasion to observe 
such men partly from a distance partly from an immediate nearness. These 
men are not always brilliant persons and they distinguish themselves neither 
by their intellectual capacities, nor by their talents and least by their kind- 
ness, yet they emanate a terrific magnetic force and they exert an incredible 
power over all creatures and even over the elements [ ! ] . Who can tell how far 
their influence goes? All the united moral forces are powerless against them 
and the more intelligent part of humanity tries in vain to unmask them as 
simpletons or as frauds; the masses will always be attracted by them. Sel- 
dom or never one finds several men of that type as contemporaries and noth- 



* The very best representation of his evil strength can be found in one of the most 
demoniacal books of our time — in Ernst Jiinger's Auf den Marmorklippen (Hamburg, 
1939), the most incredible and daring symbolic novel ever published in Nazi Germany 
by an army officer. 



ODDS AND ENDS 315 

ing is able to overpower them except the Universe itself [ ! ] against which 
they have picked their fight; and from such observations and remarks the 
terrible sentence might well-nigh had found its origin: Nemo contra deum 
nisi deus ipse. 

This is the same human-inhuman type which Jean Paul had in mind 
when he wrote in his Quintus Fixlein : "The Almighty provides each cen- 
tury with an evil genius who is its greatest temptation." But why blame 
"the Almighty" where man is responsible? 

It is curious how often one encounters people who are genuinely afraid 
of a strong government, fearing for their liberties. But a strong govern- 
ment will always be generous, a weak government will either commit 
atrocities to bolster its tottering powers or surrender to small, brutal 
groups. The exterior effort is not a sign of strength; an inner, voluntary 
acceptance of the nation is strength. The plebiscitarian autocracies of 
Europe are not really strong, because they possess bitter, and utterly 
hostile minorities that are diametrically opposed to everything emanating 
from these governments. As long as such minorities exist no generosity 
can be expected from the totalitarian "leaders," who need the protection 
of a well-organized police force to keep them in power, to keep them 
alive. It is the nemesis of the superorganized, supercentralized, super- 
technicized modern state that one pistol shot, one explosion, one betrayal 
can bring it to the brink of an abyss. 

The structure of old-fashioned popular representation on the other 
hand was such that it worked under the supposition that "No man is 
indispensable." This is a practicable attitude in a primitive world when 
the average man understands the problems which do not yet surpass his 
comprehension. All that changed during the past 150 years. It is the 
tragedy of representative government, as an idea, that it came into fashion 
when its practicality and feasibility were rapidly vanishing. "Democ- 
racy" rose contemporaneously with the industrial development which 
made lay opinion so obsolete. European "democracy" has probably no 
inner reason for its sudden revitalization. It was not a movement bound 
by an inner necessity to burst into blossom; it was primarily a smoke 
screen for the Third and later on the Fourth Estate in their fight against 
a depatriarchalized, and therefore rotten, caste system, a temporary 
egalitarian weapon which served its purpose in their struggle against an 
aristocracy or a monarchical ruler forgetful of their duties. Accepted and 
embraced as an ad hoc measure and institution this egalitarian smoke 



316 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

screen* became a res per se, a fatality which had to run its course, form- 
ing the spirit of the time and formed by the Zeitgeist, until it assumed in 
its reductio ad absurdum the forms of communism and National 
Socialism. 

Such a conception — the idea of a historical development at the 
"wrong time" — may sound strange, but one should not forget that there 
are novels published at the wrong time, men dying at the wrong moment, 
people born in a "wrong age." There is no reason why a political philos- 
ophy should not become popular under conditions which make it an in- 
creasingly unworkable proposition. 

In reviewing the European scene we must recognize that monarchy, 
hierarchy, and patriarchalism do not, on the other hand, match well with 
the spirit of the Machine Age, but they agree with it in a political- 
technical sense. We have to ask ourselves the question whether work- 
shops, offices, department stores, and communication services could be 
run better on democratic or on patriarchal or on dictatorial lines. The 
answer is obvious ; either patriarchalism or dictatorialism will do and this 
is the very choice of our time in the old world. The layman has to abdi- 
cate, 293 and it is for us to make our choice. An ochlocratic conception of 
"democracy" has unfortunately prepared the masses to make the wrong 
choice. 

Even in spite of the fact that it is technical development which 
finally devours ochlocracy 294 one has little reason to league together 
with Beelzebub to drive out Satan. The technical inventions cannot all 
be forgotten, canceled, or destroyed from one day to the other. Yet 
a healthy skepticism toward "progress" and a sound self-control in 
regard to the acceptance of technical "improvements" are absolutely 
necessary. Technics may exist and continue but we must bury our 
excessive enthusiasm for technics (and the sciences) and save it for 
worthier objects. To invent is a human tendency and inclination, to 
put inventions into actual existence is another thing. We have also an 
innate desire to drink, to eat, to shirk work, to amuse ourselves, to be 



♦The Bourgeoisie actually wanted domination, not equality. Yet the clamor for 
equality was morally more justifiable. Marx dropped the mask when he spoke about 
the dictatorship of the proletariat. Even Ernest Renan, by no means an admirer of 
conservative values and an outspoken enemy of the Church, warned against the confusion 
of American and European "democracy." From a European democracy he expected 
nothing but a series of disasters. (Cf. his La Riforme Intellectuelle et Morale, Paris, 
1884, pp. 66-67, 79, 103-104, 114.) 



ODDS AND ENDS 317 

selfish and yet — we must tame and control all these desires. The limit- 
less indulging in technical progress is as suicidal and destructive as 
limitless drinking or limitless loafing. 295 

This is, of course, only a pious hope because the suicidal, self-liquidat- 
ing aspects of modern civilization are not manifest to the masses, and it is 
significant of our times that the leaders follow the masses and not vice 
versa. The masses see only the "bigger and better" and never the re- 
verse side of the medallion. We can observe in the political development 
of the past ISO years an almost deterministic and coercive sequence of 
phenomena, leading us with an ever increasing speed to the downfall of 
western civilization. We witness a seemingly unavoidable doom expressed 
in the terms of enslavement, coldness, ossification — a return not only 
to the animal world, but to the helpless, motionless, deaf, dumb, and 
insensitive realm of minerals. 

Abyssus abyssum vocat. Yet the abysses get wider every time. We 
saw since the sixteenth century not only the spectacle of heresies provok- 
ing counterheresies but also such political forms as compelled directly 
or indirectly geographical neighbors to copy and imitate these forms, 
often very much against their own will and desire. One country using 
party regimentation, totalitarian forms of government, compulsory 
military service, poison gas, military planes or tanks coerces all the rest 
of the world to adopt similar means of warfare — or to surrender. 

Even the great victories of the "democracies" over the semifeudal, 
semibureaucratic, semiparliamentarian monarchies were largely due to 
the fact that the "democracies" (still mitigated by their strange, liberal 
tradition) could rally a mass enthusiasm which could not possibly be 
"organized" by the states with a predominantly hierarchic tradition. 
Quantity defeated quality. The Prussian State in particular, and the 
different Fascisms (and socialisms) in general, worked toward a syn- 
thesis of mass enthusiasm and efficient, cold-blooded (nonpatriarchal) 
bureaucracy, an arousing of the hatred of the mob and the mechanical 
planning of a state machinery working on precision. This lies at the 
bottom of Nazi, and even of Fascist, efficiency. There is, after all, 
nothing deadlier than the combination of the spirit of Chicago and Pots- 
dam, or a mixture of Bentham, Frederick of Prussia,* and Henry Ford. 



* Yet he was at least a statesman and not a politician like those ignorants who dug 
the graves of their own countries in 1919 at the Peace Conference or that sublime 
myopic idiot Ludendorff (by no means a Junker) who for immediate "gains" organized 
bolshevism in Russia. A statesman makes history, a politician "politics." 



318 THE MENACE OF THE HERD 

Yet modern anthropocentrism in spite of its dynamic appearances, its 
constant flux, and its seemingly manifold forms of expression, is extremely 
poor in alternatives. There is usually only the choice between the chrono- 
logically different forms and stages of one and the same thing. 

The choice of the anthropocentrist, rejecting all "political" forms con- 
genial to medieval theocentrism, is therefore an extremely limited and 
unhappy one; he either chooses to be "modern" and to be a slave of a 
Leviathan state and society under a totalitarian plebiscitarian "leader" 
or he prefers to cling to a more old-fashioned ochlocracy with a limited 
liberal tradition. Life in this form of "democracy" is infinitely more 
human, agreeable, and desirable; but the sword of Damocles under 
which he lives is prospective military defeat on account of amateurish 
incompetence and this means a life under an alien tyrant in an alien 
setup. For him there exists no other choice. 

The only way the "democrat" can meet the challenge of the "fascist" 
is by discarding gradually his liberal heritage and becoming more and 
more authoritarian. (Such a metamorphosis could clearly be seen in the 
Baltic countries, between 1930 and 1938, effected by the fear of com 
munism menacing them politically and in a military way.) In war the 
military emergency completes this process of "modernization" and the 
last shreds of liberty have soon gone with the wind. 296 

There is something apocalyptic in this ever increasing speed of devel- 
opment which even optimists have ceased to call "progress." Whoever 
has observed a big stream approaching a fall will be impressed by the 
constantly increasing rapidity of the waters as they come nearer and 
nearer to the brim of the cascade. Here is a point at which a boat would 
seem to have no chance to reach the security of the shore. A mile further 
up a landing might still have been feasible, but not fifty yards before the 
threatened cataclysm occurs. The Occident has now fairly well reached 
the dangerous point. A "return" to the medieval values has its sworn 
enemies everywhere and the final catastrophe is a menacing possibility. 
There is still a faint possibility of salvation but without action, without 
a fundamental change of direction, the boat loaded with the thoughts 
and inventions of the past ISO years will continue its suicidal course 
and speed to its doom. 

Looking back it seems paradoxical at first thought that the anthropo- 
centric trend was initiated by men who denied the greatest dignity of man 
— free will. This denial of the greatest of all our qualities is the common 
stigma of all heresies from Calvin to Marx, Rosenberg, and Freud. 



ODDS AND ENDS 319 

This denial created generations of "drifters" as well as irresponsible 
fanatical activists. And neither of them is now able to act freely any 
more. They are subject to history. 

Liberal democracy in Europe had still the advantage that it offered a 
freedom (to those who believed in it) and permitted also the dissemina- 
tion of theocentrical, cultural values. Totalitarian ochlocracy on the other 
hand is watertight. It kills where its predecessor only sneered. When Walt 
Whitman exclaimed : 

One's self I sing — a simple, separate Person; 

Yet utter the word Democratic, the word en masse, 

he had also extolled totalitarianism without knowing it. Yet now when 
the great hour for America has struck it is not the formless mass, the 
phantasmagoria of artificially leveled equality, the illusion of progress 
which stirs her to action but the eternal ideal of the dignity of the person 
and his liberty. She knows that sacrifices await her, sacrifices without 
material reward, without recompensation. She is ready to take the other 
way, not the easy and dark one of the unhappy East, but the steep and 
glorious one of the West. She knows and senses with Milton, whose work 
belongs not less to America than to England, the old truth of his im- 
mortal lines : 

But what more oft, in nations grown corrupt 
And by their vices brought to servitude, 
Than to love bondage more than liberty — 
Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty. 



APPENDIX I 



While the citations and comments offered here are presented by way of 
notes, they really are intended to serve as supplementary readings, ar- 
ranged according to the various chapter headings of the text itself. They 
further illustrate and complement the author's viewpoint, or exemplify 
the trends of opposing schools of thought. Gratitude is herewith expressed 
to the several publishers who have so kindly granted their permissions 
for quotations from their publications. 



PART I 
THE CULT OF SAMENESS 



Identity Versus Diversity 



1 "Eternity is a reminder of his (the Leftist's) own limited existence and the unavoid- 
able end. To escape this memento mori, the Leftist seeks the great cities, as far away 
as possible from real life and its significations of age and death. Hence his gregariousness. 
The meaning of the phrase O sola beatitudo, o beata solitudo will ever remain unknown 
to him. He needs not only human echoes to reaffirm and bolster up his faith, but also 
"distractions" in order not to be alone, for to be alone is to see death. Solitude is for 
him a complete waste of time — a reminder of death and a flirtation with madness." — 
E. v. Kuehnelt-Leddihn, "The Anatomy of the Leftist." The Examiner, Vol. II, No. 2. 
Cf. also, William Trotter, Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War (New York, 1919), 
p. 31, who prophesies, "Loneliness will be a real terror, unsurmountable by reason." 

2 "It is only by such external functions as the millions have in common, their uniform 
and simultaneous movements, that the many can be united into a higher unity: march- 
ing, keeping in step, shouting 'Hurrah' in unison, festival singing in chorus, united attacks 
on the enemy. These are the manifestations of life which are to give birth to the new 
and superior type of humanity. Everything that divides the many from the one, that 
fosters the illusion of the individual importance of man, especially the 'soul,' hinders the 
higher evolution and must consequently be destroyed." — Rene Fiilop-Miller, The Mind 
and Face of Bolshevism. 

3 "The Mediocre Man is the natural enemy of the man of genius and conviction: an 
enemy at the same time most cruel and ferocious. He opposes to the man of genius that 
most cruel and redoubtable of forces: the power of inertia. The Mediocre Man is much 
more evil than he appears. His basic wickedness is hidden beneath his external frigidity. 
He peddles against the enthusiasts his endless little infamies, which, because they are 
little, are never taken for infamies. He is fearless, knowing he has behind him the 
multitudes of his similars. He never fights, knowing he has gained the victory in advance." 

— Ernest Hello, The Mediocre Man, trans, by David Gordon. America, Oct. 17, 1937. 
This tallies with a curious confession based upon the confusion of liberalism and 

democracy. Denis de Rougemont and Charlotte Muret in their book The Heart of Europe 
(New York: G. P. Putnam, 1941) write on p. 114: "It must be admitted that if Switzer- 
land is a land of liberty it is also a land of intolerance towards the best and the worst 

— the head and the tail of the class. Perhaps democratic liberty must be paid for at 
this price." 

4 "The process of success consists in marching with the others ; the process of glory 
consists in marching against the others." — Ernest Hello, The Mediocre Man. 

5 Georg Simmel, Philosophische Kultur, Leipzig, 1911, pp. 30-31. 

6 Statistics furnished by Dr. Katherine B. Davis in Factors in the Sex-Life of Twenty 
Two Hundred College-Women: of 1200 unmarried women the following replies came 
concerning the question whether during their lives they had strong emotional relations 

323 



324 APPENDIX I 

with other women of a homoerotic character: Yes — 60S, 50.4 per cent; No — 576, 
48 per cent; No answer — 19, 1.6 per cent. Of these 605 who confessed to have had an 
emotional love to other women the following proportion admitted purely platonic senti- 
ments — 293; Lesbian practices — 234; clear recognition of the sexual character of their 
infatuation — 312. 

7 "Equality as it is currently pursued is incompatible with true liberty ; for liberty 
involves an inner working with reference to standards, the right subordination, in other 
words, of man's ordinary will to a higher will. There is an inevitable clash, in short, 
between equality and humility." — Irving Babbitt, Democracy and Leadership. 

8 Passage from the speech of Comte de Montalembert at the public meeting of the 
French Academy, Feb. 5, 1852, on taking the fauteuil of M. Droz: 

". . . Not having known how to read the history of this world which demonstrates 
that everywhere democracy has degenerated into despotism, it [the French Revolution] 
undertook to found democracy in France ... it dared to condemn itself to fight against 
the two basic principles of society in whatever form they might express themselves, au- 
thority and inequality: I say inequality, which is the obvious condition for all activity 
and fertility in social life; which is at the same time the mother and the daughter of 
liberty, whereas equality is only conceivable through despotism. This certainly does not 
apply to Christian equality, the proper name for which is equity, but to that democratic 
and social equality which is only the exaltation of envy, the mirage of jealous incapacity, 
which was never anything but a mask and which could become a reality only after the 
destruction of all merit, of all virtue." 

9 "Shigalyov is a man of genius. He invented equality. In his copybook it is well de- 
scribed. He provides for a mutual espionage. Each member of the society has to super- 
vise the others and to denounce them. Everybody belongs to all and all belong to each 
individually. All are slaves and are equal in their serfdom. In the extreme case there is 
calumny and murder, but the most important thing is equality." — F. M. Dostoyevski, 
The Possessed. 

10 Maritain wrote in the autumn number of the Uttudes Carmilitaines 1939: "The 
term Unity of Mankind (Unite" du genre humain) is the truest name for the natural 
equality amongst men. It helps to purify the notion of that equality from all erroneous 
connotative associations originating either in geometrical imagination or levelling vindica- 
tion. Arithmetical equality between two numbers excludes all inequality between them, 
but natural equality amongst men, or the unity of mankind, strives toward a dissolution 
into individual inequalities." 

11 Alexis Carrel says: 

"Another error, due to the confusion of the concepts of human being and individual, 
is democratic equality. This dogma is now breaking down under the blows of the ex- 
perience of nations. It is, therefore, unnecessary to insist upon its falseness. But its 
success has been astonishingly long. How could humanity accept such a faith for so 
many years? The democratic creed does not take account of the constitution of our 
body and of our consciousness. It does not apply to the concrete fact which the indi- 
vidual is. Indeed, human beings are equal. But individuals are not. The equality of their 
right is an illusion. The feeble-minded and the man of genius should not be equal before 
the law. The stupid, the unintelligent, those who are dispersed, incapable of attention, 
of effort, have no right to a higher education. It is absurd to give them the same electoral 
power as the fully developed individuals. Sexes are not equal. To disregard all their in- 
equalities is dangerous. The democratic principle has contributed to the collapse of 
civilization in opposing the development of an elite." — Man the Unknown (New York: 
Harper and Brothers, 1935), p. 271. 

12 "For him the very image of beauty was inseparable from diversity. A society can 
be beautiful only if founded on truth, inequality and dissemblance. That was the axiom 
of the social philosophy of Leontieff." — Nicolas Berdiaeff, Constantin Leontief, 
Paris, 1937. 

13 Cf. Gustave Thibon, L'Inigaliti, Facteur D'Harmonie &tudes Carmilitaines, 
autumn, 1939. 



APPENDIX I 325 

14 Professor A. T. Hadley of Yale in his book The Conflict Between Liberty and 
Equality writes: 

"In fact the signers of the Declaration of Independence can hardly have meant what 
they said to be taken literally. Most of them were aristocrats, many of them were 
slave-holders, some of them defended human slavery on principle. They were simply 
stating a theory of democratic government as it was understood in their time and as it 
had been expounded by the great prophet of modern democracy — Rousseau. In this 
theory great stress was laid on the contrast between the natural status of man as God 
had created him and the legal status which other men had imposed upon him. . . . 
Whether such a state of nature had ever actually existed was a question about which 
neither Rousseau nor Jefferson nor Franklin greatly troubled themselves. The emphasis 
on historic fact as distinct from historic fiction is something quite modern." 

15 The summary below is taken from Dr. Geoffrey O'Connell's Naturalism in American 
Education. He describes the underlying philosophy of Teachers College, Columbia — the 
philosophy of Professor John Dewey — as follows: 

"We live in a universe without final ends, forms or assignable limits, either internally 
or externally, of which continuous evolutionary change is all that can be predicted. 

"Man is as much a product of this process as are all other visible things, and is strictly 
continuous with nature. There is nothing transcendent to the visible universe and man's 
home is within it. His thinking is a pure product of experience and cannot transcend it. 
There is no such thing as metaphysics, which is merely a collection of empty dreams 
and idle fancies. Man has no soul, mind or reason as metaphysicians understand those 
words. Ideas are merely plans of operations to be performed, not statements of what is 
or has been. They are merely hypotheses. Experience evolves new standards and values. 
All human affairs whether personal or associative are merely projections, continuations 
or complications of the nature which exists in the physical and pre-human world. 

"God as a being does not exist; He is merely that unification of Ideal values that is 
essentially imaginative in origin when the imagination supervenes in conduct. There is 
no such thing as religion in any sense of relation to God. Faith in the sense in which 
the Western civilization understood it is impossible for the 'cultivated mind' of the 
Western world today. 

"There is no enduring moral law of fixed principles. Morals are purely social. The 
question of 'ought' is merely one of better or worse in social affairs. The only moral 
end is an abundant life shared by all, achieved by growth itself. There are no absolute 
moral standards; the moral and the social quality of conduct are identical. There is no 
abiding truth; truths change in experience and can become false. There is absolutely 
nothing absolutely and unchangingly good." 

This relativistic spirit is, in the United States, not something entirely new. Professor 
Louis Mercier of Harvard leads it partially back to Unitarian agnosticism and relativism. 
Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of its protagonists. On the southern walls of Hunter 
College in New York City we find the following "immortal words" chiseled in 
stone: "We are of different opinions at different hours but we always may be said to 
be at heart on the side of truth." Only Nazis have completed successfully with such a 
contempt for the laws of logic. 

16 "But, one would say, where then is justice ? 

"It is not in egalitarianism. Egalitarianism is only the counterfeit of justice; it can be 
the exact opposite, we have seen that. Neither are all inequalities injust. Which means 
that equality or inequality are one thing and justice is another. Justice consists in giving 
everybody his due." — Agenor de Gasparin, L'£%aliti, Paris. 

17 Dean Inge in his Protestantism admits that the calvinistic belief in predestination 
drove many people into suicide. Yet everybody who reads Luther's De Servo Arbitrio 
will be impressed by the fact that this reformer was, not less than Calvin, a bitter enemj 
of the concept of free will which he considered to be more or less some sort of optical 
delusion. 

"Ah, Lord! Why should we boast of our free will as if we were able to do anything, 



326 APPENDIX I 

ever so small, in divine and spiritual matters." CCLXII. Table Talks of Martin Luther, 
trans, and ed. by William Hazlitt, Esq., London, 1857. 

18 "If one goes through the streets of St. Petersburg looking at the expressions of the 
passers-by it is easy to guess who is a Communist. Their faces are not characterized by 
a luscious or a beastly satiety but by boredom, the transcendental boredom of the 
'Paradise on Earth,' the 'Realm of Antichrist.' " — Myerezhkovski, The Realm of 
Antichrist. 

19 In his encyclical Iamdudum Cernimus (March 18, 1861), Pope Pius IX condemned 
the following thesis: 

"The Roman Pontiff can, and ought, to reconcile himself, and come to terms with 
progress, liberalism and modern civilization." These words are here understood in the 
wrongful meaning which modern secular society gives to them. Similarly, in Quanta 
Cura, the following teaching was branded as an error: "Popular will expressed in so- 
called public opinion or any other manner constitutes the supreme law independent of 
either divine or human authority." And the Syllabus, issued in the same year and added 
to the encyclical, condemns the following teaching: "Authority is nothing but the sum 
of numbers and material forces." On "Majoritism," see Max Adler, Dimocratic Politique 
el Dimocratie Sociale, Bruxelles, 1930, p. 117. 

20 "To declare that authority resides in the whole multitude as in its proper subject 
and without being able to emerge from it and to exist in such or such responsible men 
— this is a trick permitting irresponsible mechanisms to exercise power over men, with- 
out having authority over them. Thus considered, power (the power of the State) 
masks anarchy. But, as in every case where nature is violated, such power tends to 
become infinite. Concentrating all their attention on the question of the origin of power, 
and reassured by the idea that in the democratic regime the power of the State emanates 
from the people, democracies of the Rousseauist type not only grant the State all the 
usurpations of power, but they tend toward these very usurpations. Proudhon admir- 
ably described and predicted this process. Moreover, the mass as such is by hypothesis 
the subject proper of sovereignty and yet lacks political discernment, except in quite 
simple and fundamental matters where human instinct is surer than reason. This results 
in an original equivocation, because those delegated by the multitude will actually direct 
it, but only as if the multitude were directing itself. Above all, the exercise of sovereignty 
under such conditions will require myths. Now, to dispense myths and collective images, 
can anything be more useful than a dictatorship — a dictatorship where the entire 
sovereign multitude is reabsorbed in the unique person of a half-god, sprung forth from 
this multitude? Thus, through an inevitable dialectic, and so long as a new fundamental 
principle has not been found, democracies of the bourgeois liberal type tend to engender 
their contrary, the totalitarian State." — Jacques Maritain, Scholasticism and Politics, 
Trans, ed. by Mort. Adler. 

N.B. But is the totalitarian state really a "contrary"? 

Further reference material: 
On the nature of sex: 

E. I. Watkin, The Bow in the Clouds, London, 1931, p. 108. 
On uniformism and social differentiation: 

George Santayana, The Life of Reason (Reason in Society), New York, 1932, 

pp. 91, 127-128. 
About political-racial-ethnic herdism: 

A. Hitler, Mein Kampf, Munich, 1939, p. 433. 

(Hostility toward the learning of foreign languages) , pp. 465 ff. 

(Authority and "Popularity"), p. 579. 

Donoso Cortes, Oeuvres, published by his family, Paris, 1858, pp. 520 ff. 
About the spirit of average man: 

Ralph Borsodi, This Ugly Civilization, New York, 1933, specially pp. 223 ff. 



APPENDIX I 327 

II 

Ochlocracy and Democratism 

21 About the modern, nonantique character of democracy, see Woodrow Wilson, cited 
by Christian Gauss in Democracy Today. 

22 The Hollywoodian happy end and the idea that the good ones are rewarded and 
the wrongdoers are punished here on this earth had already been foreshadowed by such 
Puritans as the Rev. Richard Baxter in his Christian Directory, Ch. I. 

23 The first to point out the danger of seeing in Christianity a mere social panacea 
was Compton Mackenzie in the closing chapter of Sinister Street (London, 1914). 

24 About the "liberal" materialistic optimism of Gladstone, see Kerr Boyse Tupper, 
cited in Modern Eloquence, ed. Thomas B. Reed, Vol. X. 

25 About the relativity of Progress, see, Constantin Leontieff, quoted by Nicolas 
Berdiaeff in Constantin Leontieff, Paris, 1937. 

26 Even Aristotle says (Politics, 1338 b) : "To be always seeking after the useful does 
not become free and exalted souls." 

27 "I do not look upon equal voting as among the things which are good in them- 
selves, provided they can be guarded against inconveniences. I look upon it as only 
relatively good; less objectionable than inequality of privileges grounded on irrelevant 
or adventitious circumstances, but in principle wrong, because recognizing a wrong 
standard, and exercising a bad influence on the voter's mind. It is not useful, but hurt- 
ful, that the constitution of a country should declare ignorance to be entitled to as 
much political power as knowledge." — John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representa- 
tive Government, New York, 1882, p. 188. 

28 Without much logic the proposal to make democracy "real" by giving the franchise 
to children has been attacked by Professor Ph. Kohnstamm in his Democratie (Haarlem, 
1914). 

29 The common longing is to be similar. Garb conforms to mass conceptions; diver- 
gence from the standard is resented. The mind derives its conclusions around it. Indi- 
vidual discrimination almost disappears; the desire is to be of the mass; for numbers 
indicate authority and certitude. In numbers there is strength ; the man who stands apart 
must be wrong. He is suspected, and he suspects himself. It is better to yield to the 
general pressure. He follows the mob; he acts with the mob; his mind is the mob mind. 

"To secure action from him the mass must be moved; he can be depended on to 
follow. It is more important to show him that he is with the larger number than to 
prove to him that he is right. He avoids forlorn hopes; they excite his derision. In the 
political world he desires more to be with the winning side than to stand firmly by a 
principle, and every fresh attempt to attract him has this as a fundamental handicap." 
— James N. Wood, Democracy and the Will to Power, New York, 1921, pp. 82, 83. 

30 The masses in "democratic" countries are often convinced that their representatives 
should be nothing else but gramophones of their opinions. Jacques Maritain does not 
share this view. He writes in Scholasticism and Politics (trans, ed. by M. Adler) : 

"In his famous address delivered in 1863, Abraham Lincoln declared that 'government 
of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.' Let us 
observe, in this formula, that the words by the people need comment in order to avoid 
all ambiguities and to prevent Rousseauist interpretations. Taken in their genuinely con- 
crete sense, I do not think, that these words mean a government exercised by the 
people, whose elected representatives would then serve as a pure instrument, but rather 
a government exercised by the representatives of the people, or by the people in the 
person of its representatives." 

31 Rousseau's concept of liberty is utterly democratic. He wrote: "To the end, there- 
fore, that the social contract should not prove an empty form, it tacitly includes this 
engagement, which only can enforce the rest, viz., that whoever refuses to pay obedience 
to the general will, shall be liable to be compelled to it by the force of the whole body. 



328 APPENDIX I 

And this is in effect nothing more than that they may be compelled to be free." — 
Contrat Social, I, 7; cf. Nicholas Berdyaev, The End of Our Time, New York, 1933, 
pp. 174-178. 

32 H. L. Mencken in his Notes on Democracy observes that: "The doctrine that a 
man who stands in contempt of the prevailing ideology has no rights under the law is 
so thoroughly democratic that in the United States it is seldom questioned save by 
romantic fanatics, robbed of their wits by an uncritical reading of the Fathers." 

33 Cf. Friedrich Naumann, Demokratie und Kaisertum (Berlin: Schoneberg, 1904), 
p. 92. 

34 "As surely as the Nobility is the Estate, so surely the nobility fails to feel as a 
party, though it may organize itself as one. It has in fact no choice but to do so. All modern 
constitutions repudiate the Estates and are built on the Party as self-evidently the basic 
form of politics. The nineteenth century is the heyday of party politics. Its democratic 
character compels the formation of counterparties, and whereas formerly, as late even 
as the eighteenth century, the Tiers constituted itself in imitation of the nobility as an 
Estate, now there arises the defensive figure of the Conservative Party, copied from the 
Liberal, dominated completely by the latter's forms, bourgeois-ized without being bour- 
geois, and obliged to fight with rules and methods that liberalism has laid down. It has 
a choice of handling these means better than its adversary or of perishing." — Spengler, 
Decline of the Occident, II. The decay and hopeless struggle of the conservative and 
clerical parties all over the European Continent only confirms the fact that one cannot 
expect a fish to win a fight on land, outside of its natural element. The temporal and 
spiritual aristocracies have never had a real chance to cope successfully on the base of 
majoritism with the masses endowed with political power and imbued by the fausses 
idies claires. 

35 The old Aragonese nobles, ricos hombres de natura, were always particularly tur- 
bulent, reserving to themselves the right to make war individually, and to throw off 
allegiance to the king — their peer — when it suited. The well-known oath to their 
monarch is a classic of independence: "We who are as good as you swear to you who 
are not better than we, to accept you as our king and sovereign lord, provided you 
observe all our statutes and laws; and if not, no." (Si no, no). — Allison Peers, Spain. 

36 "Real kingship — hard as it may be to get this idea into the heads of our narrow- 
minded democrats — seems to be created by God for the special purpose of protecting 
the vast masses of a people against the possibility of violation by a popular elite. 

". . . The popular elite, be it a cultural, a social or an economic one does not want, 
under ordinary, normal circumstances to recognize a master or at least only the sem- 
blance of one, a fact which is forgotten again and again or which is purposely kept 
quiet. Only in extreme danger and distress this elite suffers a master and king, should 
one be at hand. But for the masses a king standing above all classes and parties is 
under all circumstances necessary and desirable." — Dr. Schmidt-Gibichenfels, Die demo- 
kratische Luge und der Krieg. Berlin, 1915. 

37 Money, money, always money — that is the essence of democracy. Democracy is 
more expensive than monarchy; it is incompatible with liberty." — P. J. Proudhon, 
Solution Du ProbUme Social. 



Ill 

The Bourgeois and Capitalism 

38 "The bourgeois lacks piety. The first battle in which he engages to establish his 
superiority is that against the priests. In repeated minor engagements with the servants 
of the Church he prepares himself for the great conquests. In rallying the priests who 
do not know how to answer these rallies, he becomes conscious of what he is worth. 
He had been told not to meddle in matters of religion, to submit himself to what his 
pastors told him. But are the servants of God any better, any more intelligent than he 



APPENDIX I 329 

himself? One is told that a preacher has to be a saint; but how many of that type are 
there to be found? And the bourgeois will insist that it is better to be an honest man 
than to try to become a saint." — Bernard Groethuysen, Origines de L'Esprit Bourgeois 
en France, Vol. I. 

39 "So we can understand how Calvinism helped to create that curious product, the 
modern business man, who works like a slave, and sometimes rules like a slave driver, 
in accumulating money, which his tastes and principles forbid him to enjoy, and about 
the value of which to himself or to others he asks no questions. It has been said that 
the successful money-maker of today is either a child of the Ghetto or a grandchild of 
John Calvin. No system was ever so effectual in promoting that kind of progress which 
is measured by statistics. If you can convince a nation that steady industry in profitable 
enterprise is eminently pleasing to God, but that almost all ways of spending money 
unproductively are wrong, that nation is likely to become very rich. 

"We can study the working of this system best in America and Scotland." — Dean 
Inge, Protestantism. 

40 "The Protestants, having established the sacrament of the word and thereby killed 
the Eucharist, proceeded to chain it to the letter. They started teaching the people not 
to listen but to read." — Miguel de Unamuno, La Agonia Del Cristianismo, Buenos- 
Aires, 1938, p. 43. 

41 Advertising seems to add a specific value to goods in the American public opinion, 
otherwise advertisers would not point out that their merchandise is "nationally adver- 
tised." People are sometimes even inclined to prefer inferior advertised goods (suspecting 
their inferiority) to better nonadvertised brands out of a deep fear to be in the posses- 
sion of things "not generally known or valued." What they possess they want to have 
(at least in their form) in common with others. This picture ought to be supplemented 
by those freakish human beings who read publications for the sake of their advertise- 
ments without an intention of buying. The general optimism spread by clever advertise- 
ment is probably only part of their magnetic attraction. On suggestibility and herdism, 
cf. Boris Sidis, The Psychology of Suggestion, Preface by William James, New York, 
1903. 

42 "Civilization is by its nature bourgeois in the deepest spiritual sense of the word. 
'Bourgeois' is synonymous precisely with the civilized kingdom of this world and the 
civilized will to organized power and enjoyment of life. The spirit of civilization is that 
of the middle classes; it is attached and clings to corrupt and transitory things; and it 
fears eternity. To be a bourgeois is therefore to be a slave of matter and an enemy of 
eternity. The perfected European and American civilizations gave rise to the industrial- 
capitalist system, which represents not only a mighty economic development but the 
spiritual phenomenon of the annihilation of spirituality." — Nicolas Berdyaev, The Mean- 
ing of History, trans. George Reavey, New York, 1936. 

43 Six years ago the socialist writer Naomi Mitchison demanded in an article in the 
New Statesman and Nation, that all nuns should be excluded from the right to vote. A 
young Catholic writer, James Oliver, wrote a very appropriate answer but according to 
the spirit of true "democracy" it was never published by that paper. The Colosseum 
printed it later. It ran as follows: 

"Sir — There have been some very interesting criticisms of the electorate. The most 
profound was that of Miss Naomi Mitchison, who points out how unfitted are nuns for 
the onerous responsibilities of voting. People should certainly be disqualified from voting, 
if they hold any form of religious belief; since this necessarily implies that they are not 
giving their whole minds to politics. To give anything less is to make a farce of 
Democracy. 

"There is another type of voter, who should also be disqualified, he who persistently 
votes perversely. Miss Naomi Mitchison has shown very clearly that nuns are among 
the worst offenders in this voting for the Right. They should certainly be disqualified; 
also colonels, public -house-keepers and music-hall comedians, all of whom are notoriously 
Right-minded. I apologize for this unfortunate phrase. The electorate should be pruned 
still further. Indeed, democracy cannot really be said to have triumphed until voting is 



330 APPENDIX I 

confined to the readers of your paper. Herr Hitler has been working along these lines, 
and very clearly, we live in a new age of democracy, of which he is the New Statesman. 
I am, sir, your obedient servant, 

James Oliver. 

44 "A deist is a man who in the short time of his existence has not had the time to 
become an atheist." — H. de Bonald, Collected Works, VI, 2S3, Paris, 1817. 

45 "1. Individualist liberalism is of the flora of the eighteenth century; it inspired, in 
part, the legislation of the French Revolution, but it died with that event. 

"2. The characteristic creation of the nineteenth century was precisely collectivism. It 
was the first idea invented by that century, almost at birth, and it grew throughout its 
hundred years to the point of flooding the entire horizon." — Jos£ Ortega y Gasset, 
Toward a Philosophy of History, New York, 1941. 

46 "I am a Materialist," was a statement made by Jefferson. The Founding Fathers 
were far from being a homogeneous group. There was a great latitude of thought rang- 
ing from a Caroll to a Jefferson. We must bear in mind that Jefferson's Religious views 
were not typical for the Founding Fathers. He was an extremist, a "radical," deeply 
suspected by most of his collaborators. 

47 "A nobleman is not only a subject, he is the most subordinate of all." — H. de 
Bonald, VI, 84. 

48 "Absolute bourgeoisie is absolute swinishness." — D. Myerezhkovski, The Blossom 
of the Bourgeois. 

49 Freedom from vanity is an absolute requirement for a good teacher. 

The leftist leanings of the teacher is also to be found in such countries where the 
level of secondary and "college" education as well is traditionally low. American high 
school teachers show most of the characteristics of Continental grade school teachers 
and it must be said in all candor that their colleagues in colleges show frequently very 
similar inclinations. — The author. As to Nazism among teachers cf. Franz Neumann, 
Behemoth, New York, 1942, pp. 377 and 379. 

50 "To observe processes and to construct means is science ; to criticize and to co-ordi- 
nate ends is philosophy: and because in these days our means and instruments have 
multiplied beyond our interpretation and synthesis of ideals and ends, our life is full of 
sound and fury, signifying nothing. For a fact is nothing except in relation to desire; 
it is not complete except in relation to a purpose and a whole. Science without philos- 
ophy, facts without perspective and valuation, cannot save us from havoc and despair. 
Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom." — Will Durant, 
The Story of Philosophy, p. 3, New York, 1926. 

On the concept of "progress" see also Rene Guenon, East and West, London, 1941, 
pp. 23 ff., 44-45. 

51 "He who in science progresses 

And in morals regresses 
One step forward makes 
And two backward takes." 

Nevaira, Gazetta Ladina, July 21, 1939. 

52 An excellent comparison between a Catholic "backward" and a Protestant "pro- 
gressive" culture can be found in E. I. Watkin's "Introduction to the Philosophy of 
Peter Wust," Essays in Order, No. 2. (British edition). 

53 The General: "Speaking of saints it puzzles me how so many soldiers could find a 
place on the same plane as monks and see their profession preferred to all peaceful, 
civilian professions if at all times war had been considered a necessary evil such as the 
liquor trade or perhaps something even worse. Evidently those Christian nations who 
recognize saints (not only the Russian ones but approximately also the others) have not 
only honored the military career but honored it in a very special manner; and of all 
professions it was the one which alone had the reputation of instructing its best repre- 
sentatives in the practice of sanctity. Such an opinion is contrary to the present move- 
ment against wars." — Vladimir Soloviev, Tri razgovora, Munich, 1920. 

54 "It may be plausibly argued that the faults of the bourgeois are no greater than 



APPENDIX I 331 

those of the leading classes in other ages, while his virtues are all his own. But the fact 
remains that the typical leaders of bourgeois society do not arouse the same respect as 
that which is felt for the corresponding figures in the old regime. We instinctively feel 
that there is something honourable about a king, a noble, or a knight which the banker, 
the stockbroker or the democratic politician does not possess. A king may be a bad 
king, but our very condemnation of him is a tribute to the prestige of his office. No- 
body speaks of a bad bourgeois; the Socialist may indeed call him a 'bloody bourgeois,' 
but that is a set formula that has nothing to do with his personal vices or virtues. 

"This distrust of the bourgeois is no modern phenomenon. It has its roots in a much 
older tradition than that of socialism. It is equally typical of the mediaeval noble and 
peasant, the romantic Bohemian and the modern Proletarian. The fact is that the bour- 
geoisie has always stood somewhat apart from the main structure of European society, 
save in Italy and in the Low Countries. While the temporal power was in the hands of 
the kings and the nobles and the spiritual power was in the hands of the Church, the 
bourgeois, the Third Estate, occupied a position of privileged inferiority which allowed 
them to amass wealth and to develop considerable intellectual culture and freedom of 
thought without acquiring direct responsibility or power. Consequently, when the French 
Revolution and the fall of the old regime made the bourgeoisie the ruling class in the 
West, it retained its inherited characteristics, its attitude of hostile criticism towards the 
traditional order and its enlightened selfishness in the pursuit of its interest. But al- 
though the bourgeois now possessed the substance of power he never really accepted 
social responsibility as the old rulers had done. He remained a private individual • — an 
idiot in the Greek sense — with a strong sense of social conventions and personal rights, 
but with little sense of social solidarity and no recognition of his responsibility as the 
servant and representative of a super-personal order. In fact, he did not realize the 
necessity of such an order, since it had always been provided for him by others, and 
he had taken it for granted. 

"This, I think, is the fundamental reason for the unpopularity and lack of prestige of 
the bourgeois civilization. It lacks the vital human relationship which the older order 
with all its faults never denied. To the bourgeois politician the electorate is an accidental 
collection of voters; to the bourgeois industrialist his employees are an accidental collec- 
tion of wage earners. The king and the priest, on the other hand, were united to theii 
people by a bond of organic solidarity. They were not individuals standing against other 
individuals but parts of a common social organism and representatives of a common 
spiritual order. 

"The bourgeois upset the throne and the altar, but they put in their place nothing but 
themselves. Hence their regime cannot appeal to any higher sanction than that of self- 
interest. It is continually in a state of disintegration and flux. It is not a permanent 
form of social organism, but a transitional phase between two orders." — Christopher 
Dawson, Enquiries Into Religion and Culture. 

Further reading material: 
On "slavery" and technicism: 

Ernst Jiinger, Der Arbeiter, Hamburg, 1932, p. 160. 
On the problem of liberty and real liberty: 

P. A. Sorokin, The Crisis of Our Age, New York, 1941, pp. 173-174. 

(On "Colossalism"), Ibidem, p. 255. 

Nicholas Berdyaev, The End of Our Time, New York, 1933, p. 178. 
On Liberty, Nationalism and Democracy: 

William Lecky, Democracy and Liberty, New York, 1896, pp. 66-67, 256, 257, 258, 

259-260, 479. 

Sir Henry Maine, Popular Government, London, 1885, pp. 27, 28, 36. 

Sir James Stephens, Liberty, Fraternity, Equality, London, 1873, p. 239. 



332 APPENDIX I 

IV 

OCHLOCRATIC CULTURE 

55 "This country has for its honour code the rules and loyalties of the Dear Old School, 
and the Dear-Old-School theory dates from Doctor Arnold in the 1830's. . . . The 
Gentleman today is the Public School Gentleman pattern, not the man of taste, arro- 
gance, and power of his counterpart in the seventeenth and eighteenth century." Cf. 
Robert Westerby, Voice From England, New York, 1940. A similar view is expressed by 
Arthur Bryant in his Pageant of England, New York, 1941, p. 155. 

56 A violent resentment against modern egalitarian progressivism has been voiced by 
the Russian thinker, Constantin Leontieff, (Quoted by Berdiaeff, Constantin LeontiefJ, 
Paris, 1937, p. 122.) 

A similar outcry could be heard from Coventry Patmore, Catholic convert and poet, 
who wrote: "Democracy is only a continually shifting aristocracy of money, impudence, 
animal energy and cunning, in which the best grub gets the best of the carrion; and 
the level to which it tends to bring all things is not a mountain tableland, as its pro- 
moters would have their victims think, but the unwholesome platitude of the fen and 
the morass, of which black envy would enjoy the malaria as long as all others share it." 

57 "In every country and in every age the priest has been hostile to liberty ; he is 
always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his 
own. It is error alone that needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." 
— Jefferson. 

58 "The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant 
falsehoods, which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but 
which all experience refutes. History teems with instances of truth put down by per- 
secution. If not suppressed forever, it may be thrown back for centuries. It is a piece 
of idle sentimentality that truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power denied to 
error, of prevailing against the dungeon and the stake." — John Stuart Mill, On Liberty. 

59 Somebody wrote in the Patterson News (New Jersey) : "Thank goodness we live 
in a free country, where a man may say what he thinks if he isn't afraid his wife, his 
neighbors or his boss will criticize him, and if he's sure it won't hurt his business or 
his reputation." 

60 Eugen Diesel in Die Deutsche Wandlung analyzes the antagonism between town 
and country. 

61 God prefers naturally one soul in heaven to sixty million in hell. This divine priority 
of quality over quantity is brilliantly expressed by Newman who wrote in his Apologia 
Pro Vita Sua (V): "The Catholic Church holds it better for the sun and the moon to 
drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die of 
starvation in extremest agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I 
will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one 
wilful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse." 

62 The myth of the existence of progress, this great consolation of the earth-bound 
neopagan, has been already exploded by Prince Nikolay Ssergeyevitch Trubetzkoy in 
his Europe and Humanity, 1920. 

Says Lucien Romier in his Explication de notre temps: "Finally democratic ideology 
was and remains encumbered by a primary dogma, which affects the intelligence like 
opium: it is the beatifically optimistic and falsely scientific illusion of an indefinite 
progress of humanity." 

63 Already Franz Grillparzer saw clearly that there can be no true liberty within the 
framework of mass production. He wrote mockingly in 1854: 

"To England: 

"With rapturous enthusiasm in your eyes you rave of liberty in countries without 
factories." 



APPENDIX I 333 

An England: 

Ihr schwarmt entziickt mit begeisterten Blicken 
Fur die Freiheit der Lander, die ohne Fabriken. 

64 Cf. Irving Babbitt, Democracy and Leadership, p. 144. 

65 "The reasons for putting humanistic truth above scientific truth are not metaphysical 
but very practical: the discipline that helps man to self-mastery is found to have a 
more important bearing on his happiness than the discipline that helps him to a mastery 
of physical nature. If scientific discipline is not supplemented by a truly humanistic or 
religious discipline the result is unethical science, and unethical science is perhaps the 
worst monster that has yet been turned loose on the race. Man in spite of what I have 
termed his stupidity, his persistent evasion of the main issue, the issue of his own 
happiness, will awaken sooner or later to the fearful evil he has already suffered from 
a science that has arrogated to itself what does not properly belong to it; and then 
science may be as unduly depreciated as it has, for the past century or two, been un- 
duly magnified; so that in the long run it is in the interest of science itself to keep in 
its proper place, which is below both humanism and religion." — Irving Babbitt, Rous- 
seau and Romanticism. 

66 Irving Babbitt, Democracy and Leadership, p. 213. 

67 "The tension between work of leadership and work of execution has reached the 
level of a catastrophe. The importance of the former, the economic value of every real 
personality in it, has become so great that it is invisible and incomprehensible to the 
majority of the underlings. In the latter, the work of the underlings. In the latter, the 
work of the hands, the individual is now entirely without significance. Only numbers 
matter. In the consciousness of this unalterable state of things, aggravated, poisoned, 
and financially exploited by egoistic orators and journalists, men are so forlorn that it 
is mere human nature to revolt against the role for which the machine (not, as they 
imagine, its possessors) earmarks most of them. There is beginning in numberless forms 
— from sabotage, by way of strike, to suicide — the mutiny of the hands against their 
destiny, against the machine, against the organized life, against anything and everything. 
The organization of work, as it has existed for thousands of years, based on the idea of 
"collective doing" and the subsequent division of labor between leaders and led, heads 
and hands, is being disintegrated from below. But "mass" is no more than a negation 
(specially a negation of the concept of organization) and not something viable in itself. 
An army without officers is only a superfluous and forlorn herd of men. A chaos of 
brickbats and scrap iron is a building no more. This mutiny, world wide, threatens to 
put an end to the possibility of technical economic work. The leaders may take flight, 
but the led become superfluous are lost. Their numbers are their death." — Oswald 
Spengler, Man and Technics, trans, by Atkinson (New York, 1934) ; cf. also A. N. 
Whitehead, Adventures o) Ideas (New York, 1937), p. 34. 

68 Only the city, the xdAis makes politics in the modern sense. Only the urban man 
is politically minded. The idea of a modern nation is basically urban. Territorial changes 
are felt in the cities first and last. When Austria was dismembered in 1919, Vienna was 
the main sufferer, Prague boomed, Bucharest changed its face not less than Belgrade. 
Forty miles from these cities life went on practically unchanged. Thus the cities profit 
or lose from the wars and their very hope for profit makes these great democratic cen- 
ters sometimes extremely warlike and aggressive (though the lessons of the present war 
may finally dampen their spirits). 

James Bryce in his Holy Roman Empire wrote seventy years ago: "The racial or 
commercial antagonisms of democracies are as fertile in menaces to peace as were ever 
the dynastic interests of princes." 

69 Cf. the article of Bernard Wall in Colosseum, June, 1937. 

70 Mention must be made of the fact that a strong and violent anticlericalism is un- 
thinkable in a Protestant country. 

Bernard Wall wrote in Colosseum: "The persecution of Christianity is the lasting 
threat in those countries where the tension between Christianity and the established 
disorder has been greater owing to its persistence of a more living form of Christianity. 



334 APPENDIX I 

Christianity has had a safe conduct in the bourgeois world of England and America 
because it has compromised with the commercial ethos and sanctified it; and has substi- 
tuted 'decent business dealing' for the folly of the cross." 

Further reading material: 
On political egalitarianism : 

Lucien Romier, Explication de noire temps, Paris, 1925, p. 163. 
On the problem of culture and civilization: 

Andrew Krzesinski, PhD., S.T.D., Is Modern Culture Doomed?, New York, 1942, 

pp. 2-11. 

Eugen Diesel, Der Weg durch das Wirrsal, 1930, footnote, p. 174. 
On mass production: 

Theodor Haecker, Was ist der Mensch? ', Leipzig, 1933, pp. 36-38. 
The uniting power of anticlericalism : 

Georges Sorel, De I'iglise et de I'etat, Paris, 1920. 
On uniformism in the American scene: 

Sinclair Lewis, Main Street, New York, 1920, p. 268. 



Woman 

71 Cf. the letter of P. J. Proudhon dated Apr. 26, 18S2. 

72 Cf. the revealing letter in the New Statesman and Nation, May 5, 1934, by Clare 
Harvey and L. A. Harvey. 

73 The political citizen with his commercialized mentality will look at the country or 
state as a business enterprise in which he shares actively through the taxes. In letters 
of protest sent to the papers the fact that the writer is a taxpayer will frequently be 
emphasized. There is also a tendency to pass a law that the unemployed (who does not 
pay taxes) should be deprived of his right to vote like a shareholder in a company who 
has sold his stock. 

Said Mr. Paul Garrett, Executive of General Motors speaking at the Congress of 
American Industry in 1940: "Democracy rests not on supermen, but on the good sense 
of many. Our American democracy's success is the sum total of millions of individual 
achievements. Ours is a business civilization. Ours is a hundred-year plan." 

74 Cf. Georg Simmel, Philosophische Kultur, Leipzig, 1911, p. 95. 

75 The Dutch psychologist Heymans, once professor of the university of Groningen, 
seems to have had a glimpse of the main issue although he does not make as much of 
a case out of it as one should. He draws the following conclusions from the results of 
an inquest comprising several thousand people: spontaneously a woman is only in- 
terested in individual cases, not in the law, the generalizations, in formula based on con- 
ception (which is one of the most characteristic traits of masculine mentality). It is 
our opinion that this formula requires a slight modification. This is the way we should 
put it: Woman's mind is directed primarily toward persons, man's mind is directed 
toward things. — Dr. Rudolf Allers, V Amour et I'Instinct, Htudes Carmtlitaines, April, 
1936. 

76 Cf. Leon Samson's criticism of female "superiority" in America (The American 
Mind) . 

77 "Snobbery is indeed a feminine rather than a masculine vice ; it appears to 
show itself among women in a more positive and rabid form." — Gideon Clark, 
Democracy in the Dock. 

78 About the "hero" (or saint) in relation to his fellow men, see Hermann Swoboda, 
Otto Weiningers Tod, Vienna, 1923. 

79 "In substituting the lova. of man for the love of God the humanitarian is working 



APPENDIX I 335 

in a vicious circle, for unless man has in him the equivalent of the love of God he is 
not lovely. Furthermore, it is important that man should not only love but fear the 
right things. The question was recently raised in Paris why medical men were tending 
to usurp the influence that formerly belonged to the clergy. The obvious reply is that 
men once lived in the fear of God, whereas now they live in the fear of microbes." — 
Irving Babbitt, Democracy and Leadership. 

80 The pledge of obedience in the marriage ceremony has naturally been abolished by 
"progressive" Protestant church communities. 

Further reference material: 
On genius in women: 

Sylvia Kopald, "Where Are the Female Geniuses" in Our Changing Morality, ed. by 
Freda Kirchwey, New York, 1930. See the "Statistics" on p. 107. 



PART II 
IDENTITARIANISM IN TIME AND SPACE 

I 

Monarchy 

81 "Democracy or the democratic state is the natural state for a primitive society 
where the diversity of conditions is not very distinct; or maybe in an arbitrary state of 
cells where social conditions are considered having no report to political functions. . . . 
We therefore find democracy sometimes at the origins of a society or in their decline 
but rarely at the height of their historic development." — Le Marquis de la Tour-du-Pin 
la Charce, Aphorismes de politique sociale. 

82 Gunnar Landtman, professor of sociology at the University of Helsinfors, writes in 
his book The Origin of the Inequality oj the Social Classes, London, 1938, rich in 
personal anthropological observations as well as in bibliographic data as follows: 

"Among the most primitive races tribal authority is exercised almost universally in the 
democratic form of general council, while governments representing the monarchical 
principle are almost entirely absent among peoples usually relegated to the lowest group. 
We regard this as a very remarkable fact concerning primitive social organization, and it 
has in most cases only been mentioned in passing in theoretical literature." 

Sir Harry Johnston in his The Uganda Protectorate emphasizes the democratic, major- 
itarian, nonmonarchical structure of the social setup of Central African Pygmees and 
Dr. S. T. van der Bij in his carefully prepared Onstaan en eerste ontwikkeling van den 
oorlog comes implicitly to similar conclusions. 

The democratic character of early, primitive civilizations has also been acknowledged 
by Sylvester A. Sieber, S.V.D., and Franz H. Mueller, M.C.S., in their standard work 
The Social Life of Primitive Man (St. Louis: Herder, 1941), on pp. 38-42. 

It is not in vain that Disraeli called Monarchy in Coningsby (Book V, Ch. 8) a gov- 
ernment which "requires a high degree of civilization." "It needs the support of the free 
laws and manners, and of a widely diffused intelligence. ... An educated nation recoils 
from the imperfect vicariate of what is called a representative government," he wrote. 

83 "The persistence of the democratic faith in an age of science is a phenomenon of 
significance. The essence of the formula is faith. Not one of its doctrines can be proved 
in any scientific sense." — Ralph Henry Gabriel, The Course of American Democratic 
Thought. 

8i Cf. Otto Ammon, Die Gesellschaftsordnung und ihre naturlichen Grundlagen, Jena, 
1896, p. 36. 

85 In spite of William II's domineering spirit he could be told the bitter truth. The 
Conservative Party ("committee of eleven") could very well afford to make, in 1908, 
their famous protesting resolutions against his foreign policy. 

86 Professor F. A. Woods of Harvard who made the royal families of Europe a special 
subject of his studies wrote as follows: 

"I made the assertion that there is no doubt but that modern royalty as a whole has 
been decidedly superior to the average European in capacity; and we may say without 
danger of refutation, that the royal breed, considered as a unit, is superior to any other 

336 



APPENDIX I 337 

one family, be it that of noble or commoner. I have no wish to modify this extreme state- 
ment." (From: The Influence of Monarcks, 1913.) 

He continues later on in the same book: "The best argument in favor of the real and 
inherent nature of the intellectual gifts of royalty and their average superiority when 
judged as a single breed comes from thinking in proportion ratios. If all questions are 
set aside except the total within a group, a striking fact is brought out. In Heredity in 
Royalty I showed that out of a total of 823 royal persons there were about twenty of 
the intellectual eminence of Frederick the Great, Peter the Great, Gustavus Adolphus, 
William the Silent, Eugene of Savoy, etc. Let this proportion (1 to 40) be compared with 
the number of great men who arise out of a total population at any period or in any 
country and the contrast is astonishing. There have not been at most more than 200 
men of such unquestioned genius born in any of the nations, England, France, Germany 
or America, during their entire history. Each has had a population of 20, SO, or 100 
million or more, yet only a 100 or 200 of such great geniuses have been produced. The 
differences are overwhelming. The chances in favor of royalty are several 100,000 times 
as great. In other words, the average prince throughout modern times has a small chance 
of becoming a man of genius. There has only been one chance in 40, but this is more 
than a 100,000 times as good as the chances for an average child of average parents." 

Professor Woods was rather critical and narrow in using the term "genius." He seems 
to have a certain antipathy for the great Catholic rulers. He also adds quite rightly 
that the percentage of mental cases among royalty is higher than the average. (4 per 
cent instead of 2 per cent — the same proportion as among the closer relatives of 
geniuses.) 

87 "But it must be emphasized that the warrior spirit is one thing and the military 
spirit quite another. Militarism was unknown in the Middle Ages. The soldier signifies 
the degeneration of the warrior, corrupted by the industrialist. The soldier is an armed 
industrialist, a bourgeois who has invented gunpowder. He was organized by the state 
to make war on the castles. With his coming, long-distance warfare appeared, the abstract 
war waged by cannon and machine gun." — Jose Ortega y Gasset, Espana Invertebrada, 
trans, by Mildred Adams (American Edition), New York, 1937. 

88 "The maintenance of a continuous policy is a difficulty in all popular governments." 
— Bryce, American Commonwealth, I, 301. 

89 "Among superior societies let us limit ourselves to the consideration of a single one, 
that of old France; here the hierarchy of birth was considered but one notion among 
many others; besides imposing duties on those favored by it, it was balanced everywhere 
by the hierarchy of merits and that of virtues; and in the foundations of a constitu- 
tional society religion annulled the inequality which it respected on the surface. In an 
organization whose most precious quality consisted precisely in the fact that it is not 
built up systematically but results from an established compromise throughout the cen- 
turies between forces of different order, power is much more apparent in its majesty 
than in its exigence, in this authority rather than in its domination, and august as this 
organization may seem it deserves to be called benign, discrete and even modest consider- 
ing the liberty which it gives to man to know and fulfill himself outside of its bounds. 
Everybody developed his personality without leaving behind his life. The artisan in em- 
ploying the tools for his work was seizing the instruments for his own perfection. 
Whoever did his duty was working at the perfection of his soul. To every lord in society 
there was a master craftsman in a workshop, on a farm. The king was the father of his 
people only because every father was king in his family." — Abel Bonnard, Les Modiris. 
About monarchy and fatherhood see: Dr. Paul Federn, Die Vaterlose Gesellschaft, 
Vienna, 1919, pp. 27 ff. 

90 Vladimir Soloviev, La Russie et L'Eglise Universelle, Paris, 1906, pp. 314, 315. 
About the interrelationship between Catholic Church and Monarchy, see, "On the 

Monarchical character of the Church," Tanquerey, Synopsis Totius Theologiae dog- 
maticae, Vol. I, Tournay, 1899, pp. 463, 464. 

91 "Say then, my friend, in what manner does tyranny arise? — that it has democratic 
origin is evident." 



338 APPENDIX I 

"Clearly." 

"And does not tyranny spring from democracy in the same manner as democracy from 
oligarchy — I mean, after a sort?" — Plato, Republic, Book VIII, trans, by Jowett. 

92 The reason why we do not deal more profoundly with the state of antiquity is 
because we believe that the influence of the antique pattern on modern conditions is less 
intensive than usually assumed. This does not mean that one has to go as far as Gon- 
zague de Reynold who says in his L' Eur ope Tragique: 

"It has been attempted to give ancestors to modern democracy: ancient democracies, 
the urban or peasant democracies of the Middle Ages. These are only pictures acquired 
by a newly rich to adorn his chateau; he may take on the name but he is not of the 
same house." 

Yet the influence of the Antique Republic was undoubtedly very strong in the case of 
the American Republic of the Founding Fathers, less so in the case of modern America. 

93 "Now, if an unjust government is carried on by one man alone who seeks his own 
benefit from his rule, and not the good of the multitude subject to him, such a ruler is 
called a tyrant — a word derived from strength, because he oppresses by might instead 
of ruling by justice. Thus among the ancients, all powerful men were called tyrants. But 
if the unjust government is carried on, not by one but by several, especially if they be 
few, it is called an oligarchy, that is, the rule of the few. This occurs when a few, who 
differ from the tyrant only by the fact that they are more than one, oppress the people 
by means of their wealth. If, however, the bad government is carried on by the multi- 
tude it is called a democracy, that is, control by the populace. This comes about when 
the plebeian populace by force of numbers oppress the wealthy. In this way the whole 
people will be as one tyrant." — St. Thomas Aquinas, On the Government of Rulers, 
trans, by Gerald B. Phelan, Ph.D., St. Michael's College Philosophical texts, pp. 37-38. 

94 "If therefore the government by a king is the best, the government by a tyrant is 
the worst." — St. Thomas Aquinas, De Regimine Principum, I, 3. 

96 "We are not justified in concluding that St. Thomas was an early exponent of democ- 
racy. This particular form of government was for him only one of several possible forms, 
all of which, to be legitimate, must possess the characteristics which I have outlined. In 
fact, democracy was for him the least valuable form of all, as a pure form, though his 
ideal monarchy has the democratic element of requiring the election of both the supreme 
and subordinate rulers. It is only by identifying the democratic form of government 
with popular sovereignty that we can draw the conclusion of his supposed democratic 
teachings. That is an unnecessary and unjustified conclusion." Cf. Closing sentences of 
Wilfred Parson, S.J., "Aquinas and Popular Sovereignty," September number of Thought, 
1941. 

96 It cannot be repeated often enough that the traditional (medieval, patriarchal) type 
of monarchy is thoroughly compatible with (and truly necessitates) the atmosphere of 
liberty. Dante, the great Catholic and medieval panegyrist of the universal monarchy 
says expressively in his De Monarchia: "The human race is most happy when it is free. 
This becomes manifest when the principle of liberty is applied. In that connection one 
must remember that the first principle of our liberty is the freedom of will. Many talk 
about it but so few keep it in mind" (I, 12). Cf. the article of Drieu la Rochelle in the 
Revue de Paris, June 1, 1939, in which he emphasizes that a true and "manly" liberal 
must be a monarchist. "Apropos des ISO ans de la Revolution." 

9T St. Robert Bellarmine says in his De Officio Principis: "Kings must not grow insolent 
or contemn private men ; but they should carry their scepter, not in pride, but as a cross. 
... A good ruler will regard his subjects as children, not as servants; as brethren, not as 
strangers" (Cap. XXII and VII). 

In an ideal monarchy there must be a real mutual affection between monarch and 
people, an affection similar to that between parents and children. Durability is another 
characteristic of this affection in an ideal form. When Queen Astrid of Belgium died in 
1935 the people cried in the streets of Brussels. 

98 Calvin did not go as far as that but in his letter to the Protector Somerset in 1548 



APPENDIX I 339 

his theocratic republicanism does not seem to have restrained him from acknowledging 
the Divine Rights of Kings. 

99 "By the way, Shatov declares, that if there's to be a rising in Russia we must begin 
with atheism. Maybe it's true. One grizzled old stager of a captain sat mum, not saying a 
word. All at once he stands up in the middle of the room and says aloud, as though 
speaking to himself: 'If there's no God, how can I be a captain then?' He took up his cap 
and went out, flinging up his hands." — F. M. Dostoyevski, The Possessed, 

"Terrible is the Czar- Animal, but even more terrible is the Animal-People." — Myerezh- 
kovski, The 14, December. 

ioo "As individualists we are subject to the stars, as persons we rule them. ... In the 
social order the modern city sacrifices the person to the individual; it gives universal 
suffrage, equal rights, liberty of opinion to the individual and delivers the person, isolated, 
naked, with no social framework to support and protect it, to all the devouring powers 
which threaten the soul's life, to the pitiless actions and reactions of conflicting interests 
and appetites, to the infinite demands of matter to manufacture and use. To all the 
greeds and all the wounds which every man has by nature it adds incessant stimuli, and 
the countless horde of all kinds of errors, sparkling and sharpened, to which it gives the 
free circulation in the sky of intelligence. And it says to each of the poor children of 
men set in the midst of this turmoil: 'You are a free individual; defend yourself, save 
yourself, all by yourself.' It is a homicidal civilization. 

"Moreover, if a State is to be built out of this dust of individuals, then — and most 
logically, as the individual as such is, as I have said, only a part — the individual will 
be completely annexed to the social whole, will no longer exist except for the city, and we 
shall see individualism culminate quite naturally in the monarchic tyranny of a Hobbes, 
the democratic tyranny of a Rousseau, or the tyranny of the 'Providence State' and the 
'God State' of a Hegel and his disciples. 

"Let us say that the Christian City is as fundamentally anti-individualist as it is 
fundamentally personalist." — Jacques Maritain, Three Reformers. 

N.B. "Person" comes from per set The word "individual" signifies the last indivisible 
fragment of a whole. 

101 "B u t liberty and equality are incompatible. One can only achieve equality by re- 
straining liberty, by eliminating individual differences. Democracy proclaims popular 
sovereignty, the sovereignty of the number." — Gonzague de Reynold, L'Europe Tragique. 

102 It is interesting to note that the violently anthropocentric humanitarian has usually 
the tendency to indulge in an excessive and morbid devotion for animals. Atheism breeds 
either a severe and hairsplitting biologism which is based on racial differences and speaks 
of superraces and supermen or it invokes a broad materialism which lumps all "animals" 
from the amoeba to the glamour girl together. The atrocities committed in the name of 
the former brand are of an obvious nature; yet the infamies perpetrated by the latter 
are not less conspicuous; if the ant is as good as a human being there is no reason why 
man should not be treated as an insect (and frequently as an obnoxious insect). 

The efforts of Leftists of the "humanitarian" wing to abolish legislation against 
sodomy come from the same ideological background. (-F.S.C.) 

103 The prediction of Mazzini, quoted by Smith and Elder, in their biography of his 
Life and Letters, was not fulfilled. He is supposed to have said: "The indisputable 
tendency of our epoch is toward a reconstruction of Europe into a certain number of 
homogeneous national states as nearly as possible equal in population and in extent." 

104 Regarding the distinction between British and Continental liberalism, cf . The Earl 
of Beaconsfield (Benjamin Disraeli), Endymion, London, 1920, p. 7. 

105 Gonzague de Reynold, while seeing in liberalism the minor evil of the two, con- 
tinues in his L'Europe Tragique to express the traditional Catholic attitude toward the 
thing labeled "Liberalism." He sees in liberalism as in democracy ultraoptimistic philos- 
ophies of heretical origin. He says: "Prosperity is a postulate of liberalism and democ- 
racy. These are, as we have seen, optimistic doctrines which, in order to appear genuine, 
need a great deal of prosperity, happiness, and in any case, of confidence." 

Democracy is for him the child of liberalism, the French Revolution, the Glorious Revo- 



340 APPENDIX I 

lution transplanted to Paris. The Platonic idea that democracy develops from oligarchy 
which in its turn derives from aristocracy has probably influenced him deeply. Liberalism 
is for Gonzague de Reynold doomed to end in democracy: "Democracy therefore will 
devour liberalism, whose child it is. Liberalism from the beginning on felt that it would 
have to be the victim. Liberalism is generous and therefore weak. Democracy is jealous 
and therefore strong. Socialism is tyrannical and therefore powerful." 

Yet he adds later on: "Liberalism is instinctively opposed to the system of majority." 
The same idea can be found in Professor Louis Rougier's La Mystique democratique, 
Paris, 1929. 

How can we account for such a relatively considerable difference of opinion between 
him and Dawson, two contemporary European Catholic thinkers? Dawson has probably 
before his mind the aristocratic libertinarianism originating from the Magna Charta. 
("Liberty has always been an aristocratic ideal," he says in Beyond Politics). Thus he 
puts less stress on the later, additional element of bourgeois, Manchesterian liberalism 
with its strong materialistic aspects and its Diesseitaoptimismus inspired by the French 
Philosophers. This optimism in regard to this word and to human nature is the reaction 
against the Lutheran despair about the alleged total wretchedness of man and the 
Calvinistic despair about man's helplessness in the grip of predestination. There is nothing 
more truly Catholic than the healthy thirst for liberty blended with piety and real 
humility. (Otherwise it degenerates into some form of anarchy.) Gonzague de Reynold 
sees liberalism as the ism or organized philosophy of the eighteenth and nineteenth cen- 
tury, while Dawson turns his eye to the deep-rooted British sentiment. From their own 
points of view one can say that both are right. It is merely surprising that two such 
Continentals like Ortega y Gasset and the Bulgar Petko Stainov take the Dawsonian 
view about the issue. 

Petko Stainov wrote his Competence and Democracy (Kompetentnost i Narodovlastie) 
in 1923. He came to his conclusions independently from Ortega y Gasset who distinguishes 
between Liberalism and Democracy. 

Something similar had been expressed by Montesquieu almost 200 years ago in his 
De V esprit des lois (Book XI, Ch. II). 

W. H. Chamberlin in his The World's Iron Age, New York, 1941, pp. 46-47, joins the 
ranks of those who resisted the confusing of the terms liberalism and democracy valiantly. 

Gonzague de Reynold also makes the very necessary distinction between democracy 
and demophily (the love and respect of the rulers and "higher" classes for the "lower" 
social layers) . Emile Faguet in his Cult of Incompetence emphasized this before him. 

106 If only one country adopts conscription it automatically forces the rest of the 
world to imitate its practice. The "abyss calls to the abyss." The United States has been 
so forced, against her best tradition, to adopt conscription and so becomes a victim of 
circumstances. Yet, though the majority dislike conscription, still the majority recognize 
it as a grim necessity of these times. 

107 "During the past century and a half civilization has re-created the armed horde. 
Previously a rarity, it has become the accepted instrument of any great military effort. 
It has not however come alone. Exactly a hundred and fifty years ago, in 1789- — 
shortly after the United States had sought to protect themselves against democracy by 
their federal constitution — the French Revolution began. From that time to our own 
day democratic ideas have come to dominate politics just as the mass army has dom- 
inated war. It is the thesis of this book that the two are inseparably connected with 
each other and with a third thing, barbarism." — Hoffman Nickerson, The Armed Horde, 
New York, 1940. 

A similar idea has been expressed by Guglielmo Ferrero: "Before the French Revolu- 
tion, wars scarcely affected the masses. They were fought out between sovereigns- — the 
emperor, the kings, or the aristocratic republics which were still numerous in the eight- 
eenth century — between ruling classes few in numbers, homogeneous, cultured, and re- 
fined. These classes could fight each other without excessive animosity; they could recog- 
nize that the enemy's cause was as righteous as their own; they could wage war as a 
game, respecting its rules even when it would be more advantageous to break them; and 



APPENDIX I 341 

admit defeat as soon as it became too dangerous to keep on. Today it is the people who 
fight. . . . This mass cannot keep up the efforts of a war unless it is fired by some 
passion common to it all. A nation at war must therefore hate the enemy, which means 
that it must be convinced that it is defending the most righteous of causes against the 
most infamous aggression; that it represents innocent Right fighting against Evil armed 
with the most diabolical of long-premeditated designs." — Guglielmo Ferrero, Peace and 
War (London: Macmillan, 1933), pp. 57-58, trans, by Bertha Pritchard. 

108 In fact democracy is essentially militaristic. Cf. P. J. Proudhon, Le Principe Fede- 
ratif. See also Lucien Romier, Explication de noire temps, Paris, 1925, p. 163. 

109 About the objectivity of the "strange," cf. Georg Simmel, Soziologie, Leipzig, 
1908, p. 687. 

110 "The very support which republican doctrine finds in "democracy" has been handed 
down directly from the royal tradition: the king, ever since the eary Middle Ages has 
ruled against the privileged classes, allying himself with the common people, later on with 
the third estate. And it is precisely the rupture of this alliance which brought about the 
fall of the monarchy." — Lucien Romier, "Explication De Notre Temps, Paris, 1925, 
p. 195. 

111 Joseph Leo Seifert, a disciple of P. Wilhelm Schmidt, S.V.D., the eminent co- 
founder of the Theory of the Cultural Circles (Kulturkreislehre) writes about the 
"totemistic man" (the modern city dweller) in his book Die Weltrevolutionare (Vienna, 
1930), an indispensable work for the understanding of Europe, as follows: "Totemistic 
man is from the very beginning on international, since he is made to be mediator be- 
tween the peoples. Being tied neither to the soil nor to the family he is the typical in- 
dividualist, the man without tradition. He therefore has no respect for either the or- 
ganically grown or the intellectually acquired but tries to eliminate all differences because 
they only create expenses. Only when this fanatic egalitarianism spreads into national 
life, modern, i.e., calvinistic nationalism is born [Chauvinism]." 

112 Christopher Dawson says in his Beyond Politics: "In reality the existing tendency 
toward social uniformity is far from solving the problem of social organization; it merely 
provides the material, the unorganized mass, which has to be informed by living spirits 
and ordered to some higher end. Without this, social uniformity can mean no more than 
a reversion to barbarism, and democracy nothing more than the rule of the herd. 

"Obviously there is no room in such a society for liberty, as it has been understood in 
the past. For liberty is not the right of the mass to power, but the right of the indi- 
vidual and the group to achieve the highest possible degree of self-development. Hence 
liberty has always been an aristocratic ideal and it is no accident that England, the home 
of parliamentary institutions and political liberties, should also have been the European 
state which possessed the strongest and most unbroken tradition of aristocratic 
government. 

"It is a survival of the vestiges of this aristocratic tradition which, in spite of the 
progress of democracy and social uniformity, renders English society so recalcitrant to 
totalitarian ideas. A pure democracy which sets equality above every other social value 
can adapt itself to a totalitarian organisation as easily as a pure autocracy; but a totali- 
tarian aristocracy has never existed, and though the English state may well lose what 
remains of its aristocratic institutions, it cannot divest itself of the values and ideas 
that were developed by this political tradition without a loss of national character, in 
other words, without losing its own soul." 

And later he adds: "What the nondictatorial states stand for today is not liberalism 
but democracy, a very different thing, as the old liberals themselves recognized and as 
their last representative Croce still points out today. Liberalism stands for the rights of 
the individual and the freedom of private opinion and private interests while democracy 
stands for the rights of majority and the sovereignty of public opinion and the common 
interest." 

113 "Caesarism is the concentration of all social power inside a state in one single 
person or one single body. It is therefore the only form of government convenient to 
nations in a state of social dissolution. . . . Also caesarism is one of the phases through 



342 APPENDIX I 

which a revolution necessarily passes if the multitude, having broken up the social 
organisms becomes conscious of the ensuing anarchy and instinctively tries to save itself 
without recognizing its error and turning back from it." — La-Tour-du-Pin de la Charce, 
Aphorismes de Politique Sociale. Another view about the sequence of forms of govern- 
ment can be found in Polybius (Works, London, 1923), Vol. Ill, Bk. IV, pp. 2-10. 

114 "These facts have been lost sight of, on account of the merciless propaganda of the 
French revolutionists, who desired to blacken as much as they could the system they 
were bent on destroying. But no intelligent man now can see anything more in that 
period of philosophical madness than the summit of a movement that finally broke down 
feudalism, not to liberate man, but to force him into the arms of a rising factory system. 
He became free — but only to sell his toil at a sacrifice of privilege, and for a bare 
subsistence wage. It is notorious that at the time the factory system arose, when France 
and England were warring for commercial supremacy, wages were lower than they had 
been for centuries, considering their purchasing power. It was only after prolonged labor 
conflicts that conditions again approximated ancient levels. The story of the state of 
English labor at the close of the eighteenth century is almost incredible, and yet the 
ancestors of this wretched class had been the yeomanry of Merrie England." — James H. 
Wood, Democracy and the Will to Power (New York: Knopf, 1921), pp. 164-165. 

Further reference material: 
On liberty and equality: 

John J. Calhoun, A Disquisition on Government, New York, 1853, p. 56. 
On liberty, the Constitution and majoritism: Ibidem, p. 60. 

On the importance of numerical majorities in primitive societies: Ibidem, pp. 61-62. 
On monarchy and Aristocracy: Ibidem, p. 82. 

On the constitutional character of monarchy and aristocracy : Ibidem, p. 83. 
On the antithesis between liberty and equality (or democracy). 

Luis Legaz y Lacambra, Introduccidn a la teoria del Estado Nacionalsindicalista, 
Barcelona, 1940, p. 49. 

Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 1924, p. 745. 

Radbruch, Rechtsphilosophie, Leipzig, 1932, pp. 66 ff. 
About the "democratic" and libertinarian aspects of monarchy: 

Salvador de Madariaga, Herndn Cortis, New York, 1941, pp. 40-41. 
On regionalism and federalism in France: 

Carlton Hayes, A Generation of Materialism (1871-1900), New York, 1941, 

pp. 279-280. 
On the position of the Japanese emperor: 

W. H. Chamberlin, "Who Are the Japanese," American Mercury, No. 218, Feb., 1942. 
On the militarization of Japan through modernity and "democracy" : 

Cf. Ernest O. Hauser, "Are Japanese People?" in Saturday Evening Post, Nov. 16, 1940. 
About Catholic and state corporativism: 

Paul Vignaux, "Catholic and State Corporativism" in The Review of Politics, 1942 

(January, April, and July). 
On nationalism and patriotism: 

Miguel de Unamuno, Vlritts arbitraires, Paris, pp. 190-191. 
On monarchy, aristocracy, and republic: 

Lucien Romier, Explication de notre temps, Paris, 1925, pp. 195, 241-242. 
An exact prophecy of the present war: Ibidem, p. 275. 
About Francis II of Austria and Napolion: 

Guglielmo Ferrero, Pouvoir, New York, 1942, p. 122. 
On a typical seventeenth-century opinion on monarchy: 

Bossuet, Oeuvres Completes, Paris, 1836, Tome X, pp. 328-335. 
On the values of even an absolute monarchy: 

Guglielmo Ferrero, Pouvoir, New York, 1942, p. 52. 
On "federalism" from a Christian point of view: 

Dr. Eugen Stamm, citing Constantin Frantz in his preface to Constantin Frantz' 

Deutschland und der Foderalismus, Stuttgart-Berlin, 1921, p. x. 



APPENDIX I 343 

On the antagonism between liberty and centralism: 
M. Bakounin, Oeuvres, Tome I, Paris, 1907, pp. 11-12. 

On the insincere socialism of the Poles: 
Ibidem. Tome II, Paris, 1907, p. 172. 

On the "international" outlook of monarchs: 
Professor Albert Guerard cites in his The France of Tomorrow the advisers of 
Alexander I of Russia (p. 34) : Nesselrode, a German born in Portugal, baptized an 
Anglican, Stackelberg, a Baltic-German, Stein, a West-German, Kotzebue, a Central- 
German, Capo-d'Istria, a Greek-born in Austria, Czartoryski, a Pole, La Harpe 
(Swiss), Pozzo di Borgo, a French of Italian-Corsican origin, the Due de Richelieu 
(a Frenchman), Madame de Kriidener (German-Swiss), and Madame de Stael 
(French-Swiss) . 



II 

Parliamentarism and Republicanism 

115 Walter Starkie in his Spanish Raggle-Taggle reports a rather original conversation 
between himself, Unamuno, and Pio Baroja on this subject. He writes: "After hearing 
Unamuno's long enconium on St. Ignatius, the great Captain of the Basques, Baroja 
would shrug his shoulders and grunt his dissent as follows: "Great states, great captains, 
great kings, great gods leave me cold. They are for the people who dwell in plains 
watered by rich rivers, for Egyptians, Chinese, Germans, and French. We Europeans of 
the Pyrenees and Alps love small states, small rivers and small gods whom we may 
address familiarly." 

"But Don Pio," I should ask timidly, "whom do you understand by Europeans?" 

"Then Baroja would answer gravely: 'At times I think that the Alps and the Pyrenees 
are the only European parts of Europe. Above them I see Asia and below them Africa.' " 

"To which Unamuno would murmur dreamily: 'And I should not be ashamed to be 
African, yes, as African as Tertullian and Augustine.' " 

ii6 «F ree institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different national- 
ities." — John St. Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, New York, 1882, 
p. 310. 

117 "In a struggle one must have both legs firmly planted on the earth. The Party 
taught one how to do it. The infinite was a politically suspect quantity, the 'I' a suspect 
quality. The Party did not recognize its existence. The definition of the individual was: 
a multitude of one million divided by one million. 

"The Party denied the free will of the individual — and at the same time it exacted 
his willing self-sacrifice. It denied his capacity to choose between two alternatives — and at 
the same time it demanded that he should constantly choose the right one. It denied his 
power to distinguish good and evil — and at the same time it spoke pathetically of 
guilt and treachery. The individual stood under the sign of economic fatality, a wheel in 
a clockwork which had been wound up for all eternity and could not be stopped or 
influenced — and the Party demanded that the wheel should revolt against the clock- 
work and change its course. There was somewhere an error in the calculation; the equa- 
tion did not work out." — Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon, trans. Daphne Hardy 
(Macmillan: New York, 1941), pp. 257-258. 

118 In regards to the craving for safety and the golden age of collective security one 
can quote H. L. Mencken who says in his Notes on Democracy: "The truth is that 
the common man's love of liberty, like his love of sense, justice, and truth, is almost 
wholly imaginary. As I have argued, he is not actually happy when free; he is uncom- 
fortable, a bit alarmed, and intolerably lonely. He longs for the warm, reassuring smell 
of the herd and is willing to take the herdsmen with it. . . . The average man doesn't 
want to be free. He simply wants to be safe." 

119 See Graham Wallas, Human Nature in Politics, on the political influence of evolu- 



344 APPENDIX I 

tionism in the nineteenth century. Also C. J. H. Hayes, A Generation of Materialism 
(New York: Harper's, 1941). 

120 Moritz Busch wrote in his diaries in 1870: "The enlightened ones are not tolerant 
either. They persecute the faithful, though not with the stake — that would be impos- 
sible — but with sarcasm and arrogance in the press and among the nonbelieving people ; 
in this we have made no progress." (This Professor Hayes would call "sectarian 
liberalism.") 

The popularity which the theory of evolution soon enjoyed on the Continent as well 
as in England is amply explained by Werner Sombart in his last work, Vom Menschen. 
He writes: "Don't let us be surprised with Uncle Eberhard in Fontane's book when he 
says: 'I can well remember the times, when the monkey business came into fashion, 
when some people declared, that a certain Orang-Utang was our grandfather. You 
should have seen it, how everybody seemed delighted. When we were still convinced to 
have been created by God, no fuss was made, but when the monkeys got in vogue, they 
danced as the Jews of old before the Ark of Covenant.' " 

The inroads made by atheism were only possible after the Protestant prelude. The 
Protestant religions besides their inherent "protest" are mainly characterized by their 
decreasing depositum fidei. This decrease is an important element in the bourgeois atti- 
tude toward integral Christianity. Bernhard Groethuysen in his "Origines de I'esprit 
bourgeois en France" (Vol. I), gave a brilliant analysis of this process. 

121 "I am thoroughly convinced that the social instinct of an ant, stored up little by 
little in its heredity memory and co-ordinated by that memory, is far wiser than that of 
Homo Sapiens." — Auguste Forel, L'homme et la fourmi. 

122 One of the most notorious democratists of all times, the Marquis de Sade, attacked 
the human "arrogance" in putting humanity above the animal kingdom. (Cf. Armand, 
Treni, and Hood in Le symbolisme sexuel des Utopistes, Paris, 1935.) 

123 Alexis de Tocqueville, in his De La Democracie en Amerique, saw, 110 years ago, 
the inherent connection between determinism and democracy when he wrote: "The 
historians of a democratic age therefore deny not only to a few citizens the power to act 
upon the destiny of their people, they also deny the peoples themselves the faculty of 
shaping their own destinies and in that way either place them under an inflexible provi- 
dence or a kind of blind fatality. According to them every nation is invincibly attached, 
by its position, its origin, its antecedents, its nature, to a specific destiny which none of 
their efforts can ever change. They render the generations jointly answerable to each 
other, they proceed in this manner from age to age and from the necessary events to 
the origin of the world, they fabricate an immense, tight chain which surrounds and ties 
together all mankind." 

Friedrich Nietzsche follows the same idea in Beyond Good and Evil when he says: 
"The democratic idea proceeds toward the fabrication of a human type fit for slavery 
in the most delicate sense of the word. Every democracy is simultaneously an involuntary 
institution for the breeding of tyrants in every sense of the word, even in the spiritual 
sense." 

124 About the end of privacy and private life in the modern city see also Lewis Mum- 
ford, The Culture of Cities, New York, 1938, p. 27. 

125 "The physical change in the thickness of walls since the Middle Ages could be 
shown in a diagram. In the fourteenth century each house was a fortress. [Today each 
many storied house is a beehive. It is a city in itself, and its walls are thin partitions 
which barely shut us off from the street.] Man spent the major portion of his day in 
them, in secret and well-defended solitude. That solitude, working on the soul hour after 
hour, forged it, like a transcendent blacksmith, into a compact and forceful character. 
Under its treatment, man consolidated his individual destiny and sallied forth with 
impunity, never yielding to the contamination from the public. It is only in isolation 
that we gain, almost automatically, a certain discrimination in ideas, desires, longings, 
that we learn which are ours, and which are anonymous, floating in the air, falling on 
us like dust in the street." — Jose Ortega y Gasset, Espana Invertebrada, American Edi- 
tion, trans, by Mildred Adams, New York, 1937, p. 168. 



APPENDIX I 345 

126 The Prussian mind of Clausewitz had also duly contributed to the modern chaos: 
"In his [Clausewitz'] eyes the main object of the state was to manufacture war power 
instead of merely insuring itself against war. What Clausewitz really did was to de- 
mocratize war, and when the spirit of his doctrines was coupled with that of Darwin's 
"The Origin of Species" (1859), they produced the Prussian Military System; and when 
united with that of Karl Marx's Das Kapital (1867), they produced the Russian Mili- 
tary System. All three writers based their theories upon 'mass struggle' — in war, in life 
and in economics." — Major-General J. F. C. Fuller, War and Western Civilization, 
1832-1932. "A Study of War as a Political Instrument and the Expression of Mass 
Democracy" (London: Duckworth, 1932), p. 48. 

127 "if it oe true . . . that an aristocracy distinguished merely by wealth must perish 
from satiety, so I hold it equally true that a people who recognise no higher aim than 
physical enjoyment must become selfish and enervated. Under such circumstances the 
supremacy of race which is the key of history will assert itself. Some human progeny, 
distinguished by their bodily vigour or their masculine intelligence . . . will assert their 
superiority and conquer a world which deserves to be enslaved. It will then be found 
that our boasted progress has only been an advancement in a circle, and that our new 
philosophy has brought us back to that old serfdom which it has taken ages to extirpate." 
— Disraeli (Monypenny and Buckle), quoted by Arthur Bryant in A Pageant of Eng- 
land, New York, 1941. 

Further reference material: 

On party rule: 

Orestes Brownson, Works, Volume XVIII, p. 141. 

Bede Jarrett, O.P., Social Theories of the Middle Ages, Boston, 1926, p. 28. (Party- 
rule being considered as hostile to liberty.) 

On the pseudo-socialistic implications of Darwinism: 
Smile Zola, Germinal, Paris, II Vol., p. 179. 



Ill 

Would War I 

128 G. P. Gooch makes, in his "English democratic ideas in the seventeenth century," 
allusion to Montesquieu's observation about the innate affinity of Catholicism with 
monarchy and Protestantism with republicanism (Montesquieu, L'esprit des lois, xxiv, 
5) and remarks: "The idea that underlies the exaggeration is to some extent correct." 

This observation has to be taken cum grano salis. A commentator and columnist once 
expounded the theory that every protestant nation has an innate demand for political 
liberties while Catholic nations stand for authority, discipline, and suppression. Some- 
body mentioned Prussia and Belgium and the conversation drifted quickly to other 
subjects. 

129 The common denominator of European movements was the hostile attitude of the 
masses against the Church. See Georges Sorel, L'&glise et Vital. 

130 Austria-Hungary: "The final dissolution of this venerable, but decayed structure 
will be regarded by the historian of the future as the inner explanation of the Great 
War." — Richard von KUhlmann, Thoughts on Germany (London: Macmillan, 1932), 
p. 108. 

131 "u i s now generally recognized that William II was at heart a man of peace." — 
G. P. Gooch, German Life and Letters, Vol. 3. See also the works of Poultney Bigelow, 
Daniel Chamier, Sidney Fay, and others. 

There is a very good and short summing up of the arguments against Germany's (and 
William IPs) war guilt in the excellent book of the German Socialist Dr. Arthur Rosen- 
berg: Die Entstehung der deutschen Republik, Berlin, 1930, pp. 66-67. (Published under 
the title, The Birth of the German Republic, in a translation by Ian Morrow by the 



346 APPENDIX I 

Oxford University Press, London, 1931.) The catastrophical policy of Ludendorff during 
the war is brilliantly described. 

^The prisoners of war in Austria-Hungary usually went hungry but so did the 
entire population. 

Hoffman Nickerson writes in the Armed Horde about civilians in enemy countries 
during the wars prior to the French Revolution: "While the professional troops were 
performing their miracles of endurance and valor, civilians went to and fro freely 
between their own country and the one with which it happened to be at war. During 
the Seven Years' War, a man of letters like Sterne could go from England to Paris, 
frequent Diderot and Holbach, be cheered by admirers of his character of Uncle Toby, 
and attend theatricals at Frontignac among an English colony there without troubling 
in the least over his citizenship in a hostile state. So little was Europe then troubled by 
the existence of war." 

133 The Calvinistic forerunners of organized bourgeois hate could hardly be outdone 
by their more "democratic" epigones. Sayous in his Etudes littiraires sur les icrivains 
francais de la Reformation cites a poem of the Calvinist Theodore Agrippa d'Aubigne 
against the French Catholics which would outdo any modern hate song. 

134 This violent propaganda of hatred is well described by S. E. Morison and H. S. 
Commager in the Growth of the American Republic. These authors write: "Artists, ad- 
vertisers, poets, historians, photographers, educators, actors were enlisted in the campaign 
and the country was inundated with a flood of propaganda pamphlets, posters, maga- 
zines and newspapers. Altogether over one hundred million pieces of 'literature' were 
distributed by the indefatigable Creel, while some seventy-five thousand 'four-minute 
men' let loose a barrage of oratory at movie houses and public gatherings which pros- 
trated the intelligence of the country. Motion pictures displayed to horrified audiences 
the barbarities of the "Hun"; pamphlets written by learned professors proved to the 
more skeptical that the Germans had always been a depraved people; and thousands of 
canned editorials taught the average man what to think about the war. In this campaign 
of education none was neglected; school children learned to lisp the vocabulary of 
hatred; women's clubs titillated to atrocity stories; and foreigners were taught to be 
ashamed that they had not been born in America. Nor were the delights of education 
confined to the United States; in the spirit of Garrison's 'our country is the world; our 
countrymen all mankind' Creel launched out to conquer the world with the spirit instead 
of the sword. No people was safe from his zeal, no country too remote for his concern. 
Three hundred Chinese newspapers supplied the palpitating celestials with "The Truth 
About the War," and pictures of the American President and the American Flag hung on 
walls of cottages of Russian peasants and Peruvian mestizos. It was such a triumph of 
the spirit as the world has never known, and brought about an intellectual uniformity 
and a social conformity from the effects of which the generation never fully recovered" 
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1937), Vol. II, pp. 47S, 476. 

135 The Times wrote in August, 1917: "The document — (the papal peace proposals) 
— bears plain and large the marks of German inspiration." 

About Germany's reaction to the peace proposals see Kiihlmann und die pdpstliche 
Friendensaktion von 1917, by Friedrich Meinecke, Berlin, 1928. (On R. v. Kuhlmann's 
ideas about the peace cf. op cit., p. 21.) 

136 Cf. Adam de Villiers, quotation in CUmenceau parle, Paris, 1931, p. 39. 

Cf. also Philippe Amiguet, Zita, Princesse de la Paix; and La Vie du Prince Sixte de 
Bourbon. 

13r Anatole France, who remained always very outspoken during that critical period 
said openly: "No one will ever persuade me that the war could not have been 
ended long ago. The Emperor Charles offered peace. There is the only honest man who 
occupied an important position during the war, but he was not listened to. In my 
opinion his offer ought to have been accepted. The Emperor Charles had a sincere desire 
for peace, so everybody hates him. Ribot is an old scoundrel to have neglected such an 
occasion. A King of France, yes, a King would have taken pity on our poor people, bled 
white, attenuated, at the end of their strength. But democracy is without heart, without 



APPENDIX I 347 

bowels. A slave of the powers of money, it is pitiless and inhuman." — Quoted by Sir 
Charles Petrie, Twenty Years Armistice and After, London, 1940, p. 12. 

138 See the brilliant description of Lloyd George's attitude at the time of the "Khaki 
elections" in J. M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace 1919 (London, 
1919). 

139 "The great 'arbitrators of the Peace' — with the exception of Andre Tardieu, Lord 
Balfour, and Nitti — were entirely ignorant of the geography, history and ethnography 
of the peoples and countries whose destinies they were about to decide. Wilson for in- 
stance constantly mixed up Slovaks and Slovenes and he could not believe his ears when 
Orlando told him that a Polish king had led the Hungarian and Croat armies against the 
Turks and that Venice at one time owned all the territory along the Adriatic shores in 
the Balkans." — Nitti, La Pace. 

Lloyd George was not better informed. All had been said about Clemenceau, his 
prodigious ignorance and about everything else which did not concern romantic history 
or interior French politics. — Cf . Henri Pozzi, Les Coupables. 

"Nevertheless there is a real distinction between professional and temporary fighting 
men. The professional form a guild or corporation of their own, distinct from other 
citizens. They fight from disciplined habit. Their esprit de corps is not unlike a strongly 
developed school or college spirit. Their sense of honour of arms has much in common 
with that of a clergyman who will not disgrace his cloth or a good workman who would 
be ashamed to do a bad job. Thus they are ordinarily obedient instruments of the 
governments which pay them. The French Foreign Legion or the United States Marines 
have fought in many quarrels about the merits of which their individual members cared 
little. They need no violent emotions to make them fight. It has been well said that the 
grenadiers of Maria Theresa did not have to be told that Frederick the Great was a 
Sodomite, or those of Frederick that Maria Theresa, ate babies." — Hoffman Nickerson, 
The Armed Horde, New York, 1940. 

140 About the "Just War and Peace," see Franciscus de Vitoria, Second Relectio, trans, 
by John Pawley Bate, LL.D. (Relectiones Theologicae XII), ed. by Ernest Nys (The 
Classics of International Law, edited by James Brown Scott). 

141 About the diplomatic, political, and linguistic abilities of President Wilson and the 
other participants of the Peace Conference, see J. M. Keynes, The Economic Conse- 
quences of the Peace 1919, London, 1919. 

142 The following illustrates Mr. David Lloyd George's mind: London, September 21, 
1936, Associated Press. David Lloyd George returned from a trip to Germany, told the 
press association in an interview today: "Germany does not want war, but she is afraid 
of an attack by Russia and is suspicious of the Franco-Russian mutual assistance pact." 

The wartime Prime Minister who visited Adolph Hitler added: "I have never seen a 
happier people than the Germans. Hitler is one of the greatest of the many great men 
I have ever met." 

Yet Mr. Lloyd George spoke on October 28, 1937, on Spanish "Democracy" in favor 
of the "loyalists." 

"The author has tried in vain to get from Mr. Lloyd George an authentic statement 
whether he had uttered the view that Germany could not possibly be dismembered like 
Austria-Hungary because she was a 'Protestant' power. Mr. Lloyd George declared 
through his secretary that he was too busy to answer the question with a straight 
affirmation or denial." 

(Lloyd George, asked why he was so violent a partisan of the Spanish Republic . . . 
replied with a twinkle: "I always line up on the side against the priests." — Virginia 
Cowles in her "Looking for Trouble," London, 1941 (Hamish Hamilton), p. 107. 

143 If the principle of self-determination had been adhered to Austria would have 
joined Germany right back in 1919. (The Austrian republican constitution says that the 
German-Austrian Republic is a part of the Great German Republic.) The result of such 
an early Anschluss would have been an enormous strengthening of the Catholic element 
in Germany which would have impaired her Protestant character. 

Mr. Wilson had an excuse for not permitting such a thing. In the Letters of Franklin 



348 APPENDIX I 

Lane (ed. by A. W. Lane and L. H. Hall), we find the following passage: "Theoretically, 
the President said, German-Austria should go to Germany, as all were of one language 
and one race, but this would mean the establishment of a great central Roman-Catholic 
nation which would be under the control of the Papacy, and would be particularly 
objectionable to Italy." 

If the Catholic element of the Germanies would have been thus strengthened a victory 
of the National Socialist at the elections would have been spared. The history of Europe 
would have taken another course. 

This is also the view of F. A. Hermens in Democracy or Anarchy, Notre Dame, South 
Bend, 1941. As to British anti- Austrian sentiments we have to refer largely to the 
"liberal" tradition. (Cf. Gladstone's election speech on March 17, 1880.) 

1*4 "The League of Nations is no better than a half-hearted compromise with the 
ideals of Catholicism — a typist's dream of the Holy Roman Empire, for politicians, a 
new hypocrisy, for diplomats a sitting on addled eggs." — Compton Mackenzie, My Reli- 
gion (New York: Appleton and Co., 1926), p. 52. 

145 About the Calvinistic character of the Allies in World War I, cf . Smile Doumergue, 
professor of Calvinistic theology, "Calvin et L'Entente de Wilson a Calvin," Revue de 
metaphysique et de morale, Paris, February, 1918, and E. Doumergue "Les vraies origines 
de la democratic moderne," Paris, 1919. 

146 The Danzigers, for instance, once used to be the most loyal subjects of the Polish 
kings, who in turn respected the privileges of the city. When Danzig became Prussian, in 
1795, the Danzigers defended themselves like lions against their German blood brothers. 
Today the situation has naturally changed. 

147 Many keen observers are inclined to believe that Germany's prestige had increased 
even in spite of her defeat in 1918. 

Rene Schickele in his Die Grenze (Berlin, 1932, p. 146) quotes Anatole France saying in 
the summer of 1918: "Well, yes. we are going to defeat Germany. Yet for that purpose 
we will have made use of the whole world. Even if Germany is beaten she will be proud 
of having withstood the whole world and never is there going to be a people feeling so 
drunk and exalted by its own defeat. 

"If the coming peace is not going to give birth to the United States of Europe it will 
remain a mere armistice and everything is going to start all over again." 

This increase of prestige was mainly notable in Southern and Eastern Europe. The 
present war will have a further effect in that direction — whatever its outcome. 

148 The German Socialist Karl Liebknecht visited, in autumn, 1914, the charred ruins 
of Louvain and summed up his impressions with the words "Eine Nationale Schande" 
— a national shame — for Germany. Jacques Bainville who always maintained that the 
Germans are not a nation (and herein he is largely right) wrote in the Action Francaise 
on September 29, 1914, with prophetic insight: "On the contrary, a German republic, 
as the revealing words of Liebknecht indicate so well, would necessarily be accompanied 
by a strong nationalistic movement. It would be cracking a whip at a monster. The 
German revolutionaries of 1914 or 1915 (Bainville expected the breakdown as early as 
that) would be fanatic and belligerent patriots, as were our conventionalists, because 
the first obligation imposed upon them would be to maintain, in the face of the world, 
a Germany 'one and indivisible.' " 

And when more than three years later the Frankfurter Zeitung menaced the Czechs 
with German supremacy and domination if they dared to destroy the Austro-Hungarian 
monarchy, he wrote in the Action Francaise with equal clear-sightedness: "In these few 
lines is contained an entire philosophy of history. It is obvious therefrom that the 
disappearance of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy would improve nothing in Europe 
because it would only result in the transposing of the national fights from one territory 
to another. In the name of the same principle, which up to now permitted them to form 
their own national unity, and which other peoples invoked in turn, the German people 
will complain of being persecuted and will come back to demand its rights. It would 
simply be the beginning of endless conflicts." 

149 J. M. Keynes wrote in his Economic Consequences of the Peace 1919, the following 



APPENDIX I 349 

lines: "My purpose in this book is to show that the Carthaginian peace is not practically 
right or possible. Although the school of thought from which it springs is aware of the 
economic factor, it overlooks nevertheless, the deeper economic tendencies which are to 
govern the future. The clock cannot be set back. You cannot restore Central Europe to 
1870 without setting up such strains in the European structure and letting loose such 
human and spiritual forces as, pushing beyond frontiers and races, will overwhelm not 
only you and your 'guarantees,' but your institutions, and the existing order of your 
Society" (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1920, pp. 36-37). 

Keynes makes here a mistake. Central Europe of 1920 resembled far more the status 
of that region in a.d. 660 than in 1870. The tribal regions of "noble savages" was ob- 
viously the pattern. 

150 "ft was toward Austria that Clemenceau seemed to have the strongest grudge." — 
Raymond Poincare, L'lnvasion. 

The old Tiger knew obviously better than our historians who take their cues from the 
columnists what it "was all about." 

151 Dr. Edward Benes is certainly one of the most enigmatic statesmen of our times. 
He is undoubtedly a Czech patriot strongly imbued by the Hussite tradition and a mem- 
ber of the Czech National Socialist party. As a convinced "democrat" (of the continental 
pattern) he always preferred Hitler to the Habsburgs and had played deliberately into 
the hands of the great mob master by violently opposing the restoration of the Habs- 
burgs in Vienna and Budapest. He probably hoped by keeping away the Habsburgs 
from the Danube to earn the everlasting gratitude of his fellow National Socialists in 
Berlin. 

152 Thanks to the Treaty of Trianon Hungary was made completely defenseless against 
any possible German threat. Neuilly as well as Trianon made effective armaments im- 
possible. (Even gas masks could only be used per nefas in the Hungarian and Bulgar 
armies.) Tank and airplanes were prohibited. The size of the armies was restricted to 
3S,000 and 30,000 men respectively. Yet there are still a few nitwits in responsible posi- 
tions in London and Washington who speak with contempt about these two nations 
who did not oppose German pressure, German occupation, German cooperation. Have 
not these two nations implored the League of Nations for years and years to avail itself of 
the provision to revise the peace treaties? Have they not clamored for equality in arma- 
ment? Did they not campaign for two solid decades for the redress of the injustices 
inflicted on them? Yet they never received the slightest encouragement from London, 
Paris, or Washington. Hungary was vilified when it reoccupied territory which was 
solidly Magyar and had been in Hungarian possession for over 1000 years, but in Czech 
possession for only 19 years. 

These mistakes cost England very dearly. Czechoslovakia and Rumania, pampered 
for years with money and privileges, surrendered without firing a shot. Yugoslavia 
crumbled from inner dissent; even the Serbs who are good fighters had to give up 
because the Germans were able to attack from the flank, via Bulgaria. If Bulgaria would 
not have been driven into the enemy camp a line could have been established along the 
Danube and the Carst (always excluding Croatia) which could have been successfully 
defended. Yet blunder followed blunder and these can be traced back solidly to the 
arrangements of 1919 and 1920. 

(Criticism of the peace arrangement, in a short outline, can be found in Algernon 
Cecil's pertinent Facing the Facts in Foreign Policy, London, 1941 — a brilliant short 
study of Britain's disastrous dealings with the Continent.) 

Further reference material: 
On Italy in the First World War: 

Guglielmo Ferrero, Pouvoir, New York, 1942, pp. 289, 297. 
About the legal position of the ethnic groups in Austria-Hungary : 

Das Nationalitdtenrecht des Alten Osterreich, edited by K. G. Hugelmann, 
Vienna, 1934. 
About mass mentality in the war (First World War) : 
Caroline F. Playne, Society at War (1914-1916), London, 1931. 



350 APPENDIX I 

Gert Schreiner, Die Republik der 14 Jahre, Bilthoven, 1938, p. 114. 

H. D. Lasswell, Propaganda Technique in the World War, London, 1927. 
On the treatment of the German peace delegation ISIS: 

Sisley Huddleston, Peacemaking at Paris, London, 1919, p. 226. 
"Allied" anti-German war literature paralleling Bernhardi's book in aggressiveness: 

Homer Lea, The Day of the Saxon, London, 1912. Specially pp. 204, 213, 226, 233, 

241, 10, IS, 146. (This book was dedicated to Field Marshall Roberts.) 

The anonymous anti-German article in the Saturday Review, September, 1897. 

La France victorieuse dans la guerre de demain, by Colonel Arthur Boucher. 

La guerre de demain, by M. Keller. 
On the war propaganda of Italian freemasonry prior to ISIS: 

Gino Bandini, La Massoneria per la guerra nazionale, Discorso detto e Palazzo 

Giustiniani il 24 maggio, 1924. (Pubished by the freemasons as a defense against the 

accusation of lacking patriotism.) Cf. p. 97. (Roma, a cura della Massoneria 

Romana, 1924.) 
On the prowar attitude of certain leading Americans in ISIS: 

Dr. Eliot of Harvard to a meeting of Baptist ministers: "Do not pray for peace now. 

I cannot conceive a worse catastrophe for the human race than peace in Europe 

now." (The Nation, April 17, 1915.) 
On Germany and the Papal peace plan and the Papal peace effort: 

Reverend Henry G. E. Rope, M.A., Benedict XV, London, 1941. 

The article of L. J. S. Wood in the Dublin Review, April, 1922, gives, on p. 199, 

the details of Sonnino's clause XV of the London Protocol (stipulating that the 

Vatican should be excluded from a participation in the peace conference). 
On a French protest against the Treaty of Versailles: 

Edouard Dujardin (Professor of the Sorbonne) in Les Cahiers id&alistes, May-June- 
July, 1919. 
On the myth of the economic origin of wars: 

Sidney Fay, Origins of the World War, New York, 1938, p. 46. 

Albert Guerard, The France of Tomorrow, Cambridge, 1942, p. 31. 
On the character of a good peace treaty cf. 

Fenelon, Oeuvres, Paris, 1787, T6me III, p. 489. 
On the peace treaties and Austria-Hungary: 

Algernon Cecil, Facing Facts in Foreign Policy, London, 1941, p. 69. 

Sir Charles Petrie, 20 Years Armistice and After, London, 1940, pp. 10-11, 12, 126, 

21, 16S, 285. 
Austria-Hungary as "run by Jews" decried by: 

H. Wickham Steed, A Programme for Peace, Reprint from the Edinburgh Review, 

1916, p. 19. 

T. G. Masaryk, The Making of a State (edited by H. Wickham Steed), p. 439. 



PART III 

CASE HISTORIES 
A) The Germanies B) The United States 



The German Scene 

153 Keyserling thinks that the Germanies have, on account of their nuclear "Centerness" 
no "national" character. He cites in his Das Spektrum Europa's ("Europe," London, 
1927), the Russian ambassador in London, Count Benckendorff, who said: "Ne dites 
pas les Allemands; il n'ya que des Allemands." (Do not speak of the Germans, there 
are only Germans.) And he adds (making an allusion to Leibnitz) : "Every German is 
truly a monad without windows; it seems therefore only reasonable that the inventor 
of monadology should be a German." 

154 The relationship between Emperor and Pope was described by Dante in the follow- 
ing terms: "Yet the truth of this latter question must not be received so narrowly as 
to deny that in certain matters the Roman prince is subject to the Roman Pontiff. For 
that happiness which is subject to mortality, in a sense, is ordered with a view to the 
happiness which shall not taste of death. Let therefore, Caesar be reverent to Peter, as 
the first-born son should be reverent to his father, that he may be illuminated with the 
light of his father's grace and so may be stronger to lighten the world over which he 
has been placed by Him alone, who is the ruler of all things spiritual as well as tem- 
poral." — Dante, De Monarchia, III, 16. 

Spiritual interests were here concerned. Neither Dante (nor Nicholas of Cusa) en- 
visaged an absolute monarchy in the terms of James I or Louis XIV. Dante says: Up- 
right governments have liberty as their aim, that men may live for themselves; citizens 
do not exist for the sake of the consuls, nor a people for a king, but conversely consuls 
for the sake of citizens and a king for his people {De Monarchia, I, 12). Nicholas of 
Cusa takes the same stand. Tyranny was abhorrent to both of them. 

Yet just as the Pope was not a purely spiritual ruler the office of the Holy Roman 
Emperor had also its spiritual aspects. The Church has never officially abolished the 
prayer in the Good Friday "Mass" for the Holy Roman Emperor, a prayer, which would 
also be found in missals printed in the United States, China, or Ireland. It runs 
as follows: 

"Let us also pray for our Most Christian Emperor N.N. that God, Our Lord may 
give him power over all barbaric nations so that we may live in peace. 

"All powerful, eternal God, in thy hands are the powers of all and the laws of all 
kingdoms; look down with benevolence on the Roman Empire so that the Heathens 
confident in their violence may be suppressed by Thy right hand." 

The legal as well as the physical descendant of the Roman Emperors is Otto, Arch- 
duke of Austria. 

155 Cf. Edgar Jung (murdered by the Nazis on June 30, 1934), Die Herrschajt der 
Minderwertigen. 

Another revindication of the universal and all-European character of the 
Germanies can be found in Constantin Frantz' Deutschland und der Foderalismus 
(Stuttgart-Berlin, 1921), the great standard work of German anti-centralism. Frantz 
emphasized not unduly the absolute interconnection of German inner politics (and the 

351 



352 APPENDIX I 

structural struggles of the Germanies) with the fate of the rest of Europe. This inter- 
dependence, he writes, has "been demonstrated by history ad nauseam." The events after 
1933 (and specially after 1938) have not disproved the views of the Great Seer. 

156 "No g xe( j cen ter point stands out but Germany as a whole presents itself as the 
center of Europe. . . . The Germans are a people without a pattern, for their country 
does not seem to be ordered according to a clear will or timing, it cannot be compared 
with any other people. Sweden has more in common with Norway and Finland, 
England more with France and Holland, Italy with Spain than Germany with any other 
country." — Eugen Diesel, Die Deutsche Wandlung. 

157 "To live as one likes is plebeian; the noble man aspires to order and law," says 
Goethe. Yet one has to add that the blind, sour acceptance of brutally imposed chains 
are by themselves not "nobility." Any servitude must be accepted by free will as a 
voluntary sacrifice. This has to be borne in mind, otherwise one may fall into the error 
of putting a Carmelite monastery and a GPU lumber camp on the same moral level. 

158 This complexity of the German character was the thing Nietzsche had in mind 
when he wrote: "As a people of the most phantastic mixture of races, perhaps even with 
a preponderance of the non-arian element, as the 'people of the Middle' in every sense 
of the word, the Germans are more unconceivable, vaster, more contradictory, less 
known, less reliable, more surprising, even more terrible than other peoples are to them- 
selves; they escape any definition and for that reason alone they drive the French to 
desperation. ... It is characteristic of the Germans that one is rarely entirely wrong 
about them. The German soul contains corridors and passages, caves, hideouts and 
dungeons; its chaos has the charm of the mysterious; the German is expert in finding 
secret paths to chaos. And as everything is attracted by its similar so the German loves 
the clouds and all that is vague, becoming, moist and veiled: the uncertain, the shapeless, 
the shifting, the growing, all this he senses as 'deep.' . . ." — Jenseits von Gut und Bose 
("Beyond Good and Evil"). 

159 The same thought is expressed by Luther in exclamations like the following: 
"Reason is directly opposed to faith and one ought to let it be; in believers it should 

be killed and buried" (Erlanger Ausgabe, XLIV, 1S8). 

"You must abandon your reason, know nothing of it, annihilate it completely or you 
will never enter heaven. You must leave reason to itself, for it is the born enemy of 
faith. . . . 

"There is nothing so contrary to faith as law and reason. You must conquer them if 
you would reach beatitude" (Tischreden. Weimarer Ausgabe, VI, 6718). 

i6o "Out of German and Slave blood, German and Slave character, German and 
Slave culture the giant retort which this zone resembles, produces a new brand of 
peoples, German in its general coloring and species and yet very different in its structure 
and individual organism, a new species, a new, East-Elbian race. 

"So the Bohemian should be a relative of the Prussian? — Yes, that is so. Masaryk 
can go on anathemizing the Prussian, can go on condemning and discarding the Prussian 
Spirit and Prussian way of thinking. The East-Elbian Prussian is blood of his blood 
and even in his innermost being very nearly related to him." — Rudolf Nadolny, 
Germanisierung Oder Slawisierung (Berlin: 1928), Otto Stollberg Verlag, pp. 203-204. 

161 The French always played with the idea of carving Germany up into impotent 
little states (preferably under their tutelage) . Against these French separatistic tendencies 
an equally hideous centralism arose endangering German federalism which alone is 
congenial to Germandom. This French folly is clearly seen by such a good friend of 
France as Professor D. W. Brogan who writes: "No genuine, dignified, worthy resistance 
to Prussianism, no anti-Bismarckian movement in Germany could survive under French 
patronage." 

162 Cf. D. W. Brogan, France Under the Republic (1870-1939) (New York and 
London: Harper and Bros., 1940), p. 566. 

163 Carl Dyrssen in his book Die Botschaft des Ostens ("The Message of the East," 
Breslau, 1932), defends warmly an alliance between National Socialism and Communism. 
This young Prussian National Socialist expresses hatred for the West, admiration for 



APPENDIX I 353 

the East and contempt for Italian Fascism as a "Catholic" and Occidental phenomenon. 
One must not forget that this book was written before Hitler's advent to power and 
the destructive influence of National Socialism over (the then relatively innocent) forms 
of Fascism. Yet Prussia, Russia, Communism and National Socialism are one in Herr 
Dyrssen's eyes. 

164 Dr. Helmut Erbe in his work Die Hugenotten in Deutschland (1938) informs us 
that after the Edict of Potsdam (the official invitation and compilation of privileges for 
the Huguenots issued on October 29, 1685) about 30,000 Frenchmen came to the 
Protestant Districts of the Germanies. About 20,000 came to Brandenburg. To these 
about 6000 Walloons and 3000 "Waldensians" must be added. There were 4000 
French among 11,000 Berlinians in 1699. 

"The Huguenots, already in the first generation presented 14.4 per cent of the govern- 
ment officials (not counting employees) and in the second generation 22.5 per cent. 
This increase continued. ... In the sphere of defense an influence can therefore hardly 
be denied. Generally this influence was unavoidable — the Huguenots soon formed one 
third of the Prussian officers corps." The descendants of these Huguenots, he adds, today 
number several millions. Frederick the Great alludes to their part in transforming Prussia 
into a commercial-industrial-bureaucratic state (cf. his Denkwiirdigkeiten) . 

165 Lutheranism had an almost equally deteriorating effect upon the development of 
liberties and human dignity. 

Werner Hegemann writes in Entlarvte Geschichte: "It was Luther who turned the 
princes into popes and made coarse tools for the state out of the delicate bonds of 
religion" and later: "Luther declared: Authorities have been given by God the power 
to drive, beat, throttle, hang, burn, behead and torture the mob in order to be feared. 
As pigs and wild animals have to be driven and forced so authority has to enforce the 
fulfillment of its laws." 

Treitschke wrote in Historische und Politische Aujsatze (Dresden, 1933) : "The immoral 
teaching of long-suffering obedience sucked the marrow of will from the bones of the 
Lutherans." Which is not surprising if we remember how Luther worshiped princely 
authority when he wrote in his notorious: Wider the rauberischen und morderischen 
Rotten der Bauern ("Against the robbing and murderous hords of the peasants") : "So 
strange are these times that a prince can gain heaven by shedding blood more than 
by praying." 

These words could have been written on June 30, 1934, by the Volkischer Beobachter. 

166 On Frederic II. 

"We Germans, regarding ourselves as a people, could derive little pleasure from this 
king, none has done us so much harm not only apparently but in reality." — Ernst 
Moritz Arndt, Geist der Zeit. 

167 It is only the successful Prussian bourgeois which is so generally disliked. The 
much maligned member of the gentry (the Junker) has his great qualities. He profited 
far less from the artificial aggrandizement of Prussia than the city dweller. Even Gon- 
zague de Reynold in his L'Europe Tragique has much to say in his favor. 

168 Charles I, unpopular through no fault of his, after his fall left the Viennese Social 
Democracy and its bourgeois appendix, Austria, about the same size as it had been 
when his ancestors Rudolf I took it over from the Babenbergs. The Austrian people once 
more sat in the Danube basin and on the slopes of the Alps, starving, freezing, singing, 
dancing and generally muddling through. — Hanns Sassmann, Das Reich der Trdumer, 
Berlin, 1932, Verlag fur Kulturpolitik, pp. 411-412. 

169 "The theorists of our time who seem to be able to see only the large and get 
emotional over words like "humanity" (no one knows what it really means and why 
one should die for it) call the very idea of creating more instead of fewer states 
medieval backwardness. They are all out for unionism and colossalism, though union- 
ism is nothing really but another expression for totalitarianism, even if it is thought to 
be a guarantee for peace. It is the one-party system transplanted into the international 
field. . . . Unionism ... is a deadly serious scheme without humor, meant for men as 
a collectivity and as social animals of lower order; and it reminds me constantly, in all 



354 APPENDIX I 

its earnest elaborateness of the German Professor who submitted to Satan a new plan 
for organizing Hell. Whereupon Satan answered with rock shaking laughter: "Organize 
Hell? My dear Professor, organization, that is Hell." — Hans Kohr, "Disunion Now," 
Commonweal, Vol. XXXIV, No. 23. 

170 Donoso Cortes, the famous Spanish Conservative, who acted for several years as 
Spanish Envoy in Berlin, never liked Prussia. His Catholic instincts told him that there 
was a power of evil. He once said: "I am neither a Friend of Prussia, nor of her 
politics, nor of her increase, nor of her existence; I believe that she is in league with 
the Devil since her existence, and I am still convinced that this situation is going to 
continue on account of some sort of historical fatality." — (Cited by Edmund Schramm 
in Donoso Cortis, Hamburg, 193S.) 

The conservative Prussian Constantin Frantz was deeply shocked and perturbed by 
Bismarck's policy. He wrote in his Abfertigung der nationalliberalen Presse nebst einer 
hb'chst nbthigen Belehrung iiber den Ultramontanismus (Leipzig, 1873, pp. 54-55) that 
never has so fatal a blow been dealt against the monarchical principle since 1789 as the 
Prussian action of 1866. Its consequences, he prophesized, would first be felt in Germany, 
but later in the whole world. 

An excellent modern book on this subject is S. D. Stirk, The Prussian Spirit, London, 
1941. 

171 The men of the fourth of September had not wakened to the fact that Prussia 
had adopted, sixty years ago, and rendered perfect the French invention of the mass 
uprising. — Daniel Halevy, Histoire d'une histoire. 

German centralism and herdism generated and enforced by the French Revolution 
slowly crushed German personalism and federalism, which were after all closely inter- 
related manifestations of the traditional German spirit. Says Denis de Rougemont in 
an article "Gedanken iiber den Foderalismus" in the Swiss bimonthly Mass und Wert 
(Zurich, March-April, 1940) : "The Philosophy of the 'Person' is the only one which 
can be taken seriously into consideration by the federalist idea. . . . Both, individualism 
and collectivism, result finally in the adoption and veneration of the centralistic Einheits- 
staat (uniformistic State). ... If one lets the masses act as masses then they will in- 
evitably establish totalitarian systems. But 'persons' (such as we have defined them) 
will necessarily favor the federalistic types of political organizations." 

172 "Xhe French Revolution was the generating factor in the idea of a German unity." 
— Renan, Reforme Intellectuelle Et Morale. 

173 The mechanical process of unification destroyed traditions and natural conditions 
with amazing results. The small central-German states west of Saxony, which were 
lumped together by the centralistic Weimar Republic into an artificial unit called 
"Thuringia," became the breeding place first of Communism and afterwards of national 
socialism. Once the local pride and loyalty is destroyed, man is more prone to become 
an identitarian diracini. 

The connection between Catholicism, Federalism (in the European sense which has a 
connotation opposite to the American concept) and the Habsburgian tradition in the 
Germanies, is set forth in the book of the German Socialist Dr. Arthur Rosenberg, Die 
Entstehung der Deutschen Republik, 1871-1918, Berlin, 1930, pp. 18-20. (Trans, by Ian 
Morrow, London-New York, 1931.) 

Uniformity is postulated by Hitler in Mein Kampf (Munich, 1939, p. 44) and attacked 
by Donoso Cortes in his Oeuvres (III, Paris, 1858, p. 540). 

See also the connection between anticentralism and monarchism in France under the 
third republic as described by Carlton J. H. Hayes, A Generation of Materialism (New 
York, 1941, pp. 279, 280). 

m "Finally the following principle of organic life has to be regarded everywhere: 
every particle and every system inside the organism has to be as perfect as possible, 
that is to say it has to develop an independent faculty for living and shaping itself to 
be able to raise the entire organism to sublime perfection and plenipotence. 

"Therefore the centralization of economic and political forces which absorbs local life 
and develops in the wake of the doctrinary liberal policy can hardly lead to a healthy 
national and liberal life." 



APPENDIX I 355 

From the Manifesto of the Prussian Conservatives, 1856, contained in Grundziige der 
konservativen Politik, Berlin, 1856. 

175 Cf. Liberal centralism is well described by Carlton J. H. Hayes in his A Genera- 
tion of Materialism, New York, 1941, pp. 82-83. 

175 Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn describes the differences between the First and the 
Second Reich with the following words in Jesuiten, Spiesser, Bolschewiken (Salzburg, 
1933) : "The First Reich built the Marienburg, St. Stephen's in Vienna, Beuron, the 
cathedral of Speyer, the dome in Ulm; the First Reich spread from Sicily to the Belt, 
from Kaschau to Cambrai, where the Cathedral still bears its symbol — the double- 
headed eagle. The First Reich brought us gothic and baroque styles, the sun never set 
within its boundaries, it fought Swedish, Turkish and French robbery. 

"But the foundation stone of the Second Reich was laid by frenchified princelets, ac- 
cepting French subsidies, and stolid, merry petits bourgeois who for the sake of practical 
advantages broke up German unity. The Second Reich could not boast of Nordlingen, 
Zenta, St. Gotthard or Aspern, it only had the shame of Koniggatz and the tragedy 
of the Marne. The Second Reich had an Emperor who allowed his hands to be kissed 
while Francis Joseph washed the feet of twelve old beggars every Maundy Thursday. 
The Second Reich had no minstrels, no Nibelungen saga, no Rembrandt or Angelus 
Silesius, it only had Wildenbruch, Sudermann, flannel underwear and leg-of-mutton 
sleeves. It had no Roswitha von Gandersheim, Abraham a Sancta Clara, no Seuse, no 
Tauler, Albertus Magnus or Eckehardt, no mysticism and no depth — it was a country 
of commercial advisers, banks, barracks, stickups and the Hofbrau-style, it was ungodly 
and dusty, un-German and middle-class, tense and trashy to the nth degree. For culture 
can only be born from the whole, not from the partial, divided and heretical lumps; 
whatever German culture there is has grown inside or very near to the Church. Even 
Schiller and Goethe, Wagner and Bach, Lucas Cranach and Max Scheler worked in the 
shadow of the Church. The German spirit is occidental, the occidental spirit is Catholic 
— everything else is an imposture on German culture." 

We have seen clearly what sort of decision National Socialism made. The Nazi char- 
acter of the Weimar Republic has been clearly recognized by Sir Charles Petrie who 
writes: "As for the Treaty of Versailles itself, one of its greatest weaknesses was that the 
Allies, in opposition to their own interests, carried the work of Bismarck to its logical 
conclusion and completed the unification of Germany. The strongest centrifugal force 
which ruled the various kingdoms and duchies, and which were always restive under the 
tutelage of Berlin were the local dynasties; yet, as we have seen, the German people were 
deliberately encouraged to overthrow their ruling houses, to many of which they were 
deeply attached, as the price of peace, and so the last obstacle to a unified Reich was 
removed by those most concerned in its retention. Once the dynasties had gone there was 
no reason for the continued existence of their former dominions as separate units, and 
so the way was cleared for that complete Prussianization of Germany, which was to be 
the outstanding accomplishment of the Nazi regime." — Twenty Years' Armistice and 
After, London, 1940, p. 21. 

That the nineteenth century with its "progressive" ideas wrought havoc in the 
Germanies is also admitted by Peter Viereck who accuses nationalism and capitalism 
for the decadence and suicide of true German culture. He writes: "Under these 360 
semi-independent princelings [of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806] life was easy-going, 
static, unadventurous. A cultured aristocracy flourished with gentlemanly inefficiency. The 
economic standards of living were low from our viewpoint, but really high compared 
with those of the earlier seventeenth century. From this mellow atmosphere, so rich 
with accumulated tradition, ripened the very finest fruits of German culture. Even the 
pettiest courts vied at attracting creative intellects. The court of the tiny Duchy of 
Weimar was simultaneously graced by Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, Jean Paul, and Herder. 
This is more cultural greatness in a feeble state of a few square miles than the whole 
modern German state and most modern power states can boast. 

"This fruitful but overripe culture was the product of the creative idleness of upper- 
middle-class humanists dependent on aristocratic patronage from above. The patronage 



356 APPENDIX I 

was forthcoming because some of the courts — enough of them to keep any Goethe or 
Humboldt from being slave to economic needs — were models of taste and urbane dis- 
crimination. All this was swept away by the awakening of nationalism and capitalism in 
the new bourgeoisie. The Germanies, the land of musicians and poets, was step by step 
replaced by a unified centralized Germany, a land of far greater political power and 
far greater economic prosperity and yet in one sense far less great." — Peter Viereck, 
Metapolitics, New York, 1941, pp. 54-55. 

176 Continental Socialism had a more "religious" vision of the things to come. Chris- 
topher Dawson points out that: "Behind the hard rational surface of Karl Marx's ma- 
terialist and socialist interpretation of history, there burns the flame of an apocalyptic 
vision. For what was that social revolution in which he put his hope but a nineteenth 
century version of the Day of the Lord, in which the rich and the powerful of the 
earth should be consumed, and the princes of the Gentiles brought low, and the poor 
and disinherited should reign in a regenerated universe?" — Enquiries in Religion and 
Culture. 

There is a Nazi version to that in the vision of Die Nacht der langen Messer. 

177 The craving for a leader in the masses is well described by Robert Michels, in 
Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der Modernen Democratie, Leipzig, 1911, pp. 53-55. 

178 "But often the attraction of rhetorical art is only the overture for a long period of 
disappointments for the masses because of its ensuing lack of action or the coarseness 
of the speaker's character. But in most cases the audience becomes a victim to the 
speaker's ability to intoxicate them, making them see him as a magnifying mirror of 
their own personalities. Their admiration and enthusiasm for the speaker finally is 
nothing but admiration and enthusiasm for their own personalities. This sentiment is 
encouraged by the speaker when he professes to speak and act in the name of the 
masses, that is to say of every single individual. Unconscious inspirations of egotism 
are the reason for the obedient following of the masses." 

Cf. Robert Michels, Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der Modernen Democratie, 
Leipzig, 1911, p. 86. 

Needless to say that the "leader" is not a trained expert. 

178 "Probably the origin of this anti-individual fury lies in the fact that in their inner- 
most hearts the masses feel themselves weak and defenseless in the face of their destiny. 
On a bitter and terrible page Nietzsche notes how, in primitive societies which were weak 
when confronted with the difficulties of existence, every individual and original act was 
a crime, and the man who tried to lead a solitary life was a malefactor. He must in 
everything comport himself according to the fashions of the tribe. 

"Now, apparently, many men are again feeling homesick for the herd. They devote 
themselves passionately to whatever there is left in them of the sheep. They want to 
march through life together, along the collective path, shoulder to shoulder, wool 
rubbing wool, and the head down. This is the reason why so many European peoples 
are looking for a shepherd and a sheep dog." — Jose Ortega y Gasset, Invertebrate 
Spain (Amer. edit.), trans, by Mildred Adams, New York, 1937, p. 170. 

180 The Weimar Republic drove democratically minded men like Count Keyserling 
back to the fold of aristocratism. In his Spektrum Europas, he confessed openly, seven 
years after the Weimar assembly: "When the old order of estates had grown obsolete 
democratism became a factor of progress. Since the World War (No. I) it has become 
a factor of regress, for a rule of quality alone can save Europe; the idea of quantity 
in its good sense has outlived itself." 

181 "As long as the democratic, nationalistic State of French casting remains the pre- 
dominant form of State in Europe, striving for unity and equality, approving the force- 
ful remodeling of heterogeneous citizens and tending toward cultural and economical 
exploitation of alien races . . . this difficulty (the problem of minorities) will continue. 
It is typical for nationalistic States that they attempt to wipe out the characteristics of 
their 'minorities,' and it is equally typical for the supra-individualistic trend of thought 
that it protects individual life and character and therefore brings out the value of the 
character of a people. Formal democracy with its elections and counting of votes is in 



APPENDIX I 357 

itself a constant source of disaster: the majority decides some injustice which becomes 
a law, sanctified by the majority of votes." — Edgar Jung, Die Herrschaft der 
Minderwertigen. 

182 "It may be that the Jews, often the victims of their own idealism, have always 
been instrumental in bringing about the events they most heartily disapprove of; that 
maybe is the curse of the Wandering Jew." — George Pitt-Rivers, The World Significance 
of the Prussian Revolution. 

Further reference material: 
On the German Soul: 

Baron Friedrich von Hiigel, LL.D., The German Soul and the Great War, reprint 

from The Quest, Vol. I, No. 3, April, 1915. 

Bogislaw von Selchow, Der unendliche Kreis, Leipzig, 193S, pp. 342-343. 
The National Socialists and the First Reich: 

Alfred Rosenberg, "Gegen Warnung und F&lschung" in Der Volkische Beobachter, 

Dec. 8, 1933. 
On Luther and Free Will: 

Martin Luther, De Servo Arbitrio. 

The Lutheran Cyclopaedia, New York, 1899, pp. 186-187. 
On the spirit of the Holy Roman Empire: 

Ricarda Huch, Stein, der Erwecker des Reichsgedankens, Berlin, 1932, pp. S-9. 
On German Conservativism: 

See the depressingly optimistic article in the Ring (Prussian, ultraconservative weekly) 

from January 6, 1933, entitled: "The Victory of Prussian Conservativism over the 

Hitler Movement." 

The number of December 8, 1932, carries a long advertisement of the Schocken 

Publishing Company, specialized in Jewish religious books. 
On Frederick II of Prussia: 

See the two brilliant books of Werner Hegemann: Fredericus oder das Kb'nigsopfer 

and Das Jugendbuch des grossen Kb'nigs (Both, Dresden, Jacob Hegner). 
On Dr. Bruning's efforts to restore the monarchy in Germany: 

John J. Wheeler-Bennett, Hindenburg, the Wooden Titan, London, 1936, pp. 339, 

335-368. 

II 

National Socialism 

is3 "Our whole political machinery presupposes a people so fundamentally as one that 
they can safely afford to bicker; and so sure of their own moderation that they are not 
dangerously disturbed by the never ending din of political conflict." — Lord Balfour, 
cit. by Harold Laski, Parliamentary Government in England. 

"Since 1689 we have had, for all effective purposes, a single party in control of the 
state. It has been divided, no doubt, into two wings. It has differed within itself upon 
matters like the pace of change and the direction of change. Its quarrels . . . have 
always, so to say, been family quarrels in which there has been ample room for com- 
promise. . . . Members of either wing could cross to the other without any alteration 
of the fundamental doctrine." — Harold Laski, op. cit., p. 83. 

184 The situation in America is similar yet the conditions on the Continent are radically 
different. 

"In order to have a parliamentary government the supposition is that the parties, in 
spite of their differences, are quite closely related. In America this is true of the 
democratic and republican parties. As the two names show, there is no essential differ- 
ence between them. The one is more unionistic, the other more federalistic. In England 
we have the Whigs and the Tories, now called the Liberals and the Conservatives. The 
differences are so slight that very frequently one party has adopted a plank from the 
other party platform. Both parties together once banished the Stuart kings and the 



358 



APPENDIX I 



election reform of 1867 was made by the Conservatives. Such parties can easily alternate 
in the administration of the state without throwing it out of equilibrium. 

"It is not possible, however, to have parties alternate which are so diametrically op- 
posed to one another that the one is monarchical and the other republican. If France 
were again to have a monarchically disposed majority which should reintroduce a king- 
dom, and then after a succession of years a republican majority should come and intro- 
duce a republic again, and so on in changing alternations, the state would be ruined." — 
Hans Delbriick, Government and the Will of the People, trans, by Roy S. MacElwee 
(New York: Oxford U. Press, 1923), p. 101. 



Reichstag Party 
Nazis 



Elections for the Reichstag 
(Representatives: One for 60,000 Votes) 

5/20/28 14/9/30 
National Socialists 12 107 



6/11/32 
196 



3/S/33 
288 



Conservative 
Catholic & 
Socialist 
Parties 



Lutheran, 

Liberal & 

Democratic 

Parties 



Deutschnationale 78 44 

Volkspartei (Cons.) 

Bayrische Volkspartei 17 19 

(Cath. Bavar.) 



Zentrum (Catholics) 

Social-Democrats 
and Ind. Soc. 

Communists 

Total of that group. 
Deutsches Landvolk 
Christlich-Nationale 
Bauern-Partei 
(Rural-agrarian) (Luth.) 



Christlichsozialer — 14 

Volksdienst 

(Lutheran) 

Wirtschaftspartei 23 23 

(Middle-Class) 

German-Hanoverian 4 3 

Party (Opposit.) 

Deutsche Bauernpartei 8 6 

(Peasant) 

Deutsche Volkspartei 45 30 

(Industr. Bourgeoisie) 



German Democratic 


25 


14 


Party (D. Staatspartei) 






Others: 


2 


10 


Total of that group . . . 


. 116 


119 



54 



19 



11 



53 



19 



61 


68 


70 


73 


153 


143 


121 


120 


54 


77 


100 


(81) 


363 


351 


364 


346 


9 


19 


— 


— 



24 



13 



APPENDIX I 359 

This tabulation makes it quite evident that the large bulk of the democratic and liberal 
voters became successively National Socialists while the other non-Nazi parties were able 
to preserve the loyalty of their voters as late as March, 1933. The downfall of German 
parties was prophesied by Constantin Frantz in his Die Quelle alles Vbels (1863). 

186 For description of Munich, see Thomas Wolfe's The Web and the Rock. 

187 "Both emotional nationalism and emotional internationalism go back to Rousseau, 
but in his final emphasis he is an emotional nationalist; and that is because he saw 
that patriotic 'virtue' is a more potent intoxicant than the love of humanity. The 
demonstration came in the French Revolution which began as a great international 
movement and ended in imperialism and Napoleon Bonaparte. It is here that the terrible 
peril of a science that is pursued as an end in itself becomes manifest. It disciplines 
man and makes him efficient on the naturalistic level, but leaves him ethically undis- 
ciplined. Now in the absence of ethical discipline the lust for knowledge and the lust 
for feeling count very little, at least practically, compared with the third main lust of 
human nature — the lust for power. Hence the emergence of that most sinister of all 
types — the efficient megalomaniac. The final use of a science that has thus become a 
tool of the lust for power is in Burke's phrase to 'improve the mystery of murder.' " — 
Irving Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticism. 

188 Guglielmo Ferrero in his article "La Vague Dictatoriale" (Illustration, Jan. 20, 
1923), says explicitly: "Even a dictator, if he does not intend to copy the Russian 
model, has nowadays to appear as a representative of the people's will. We have seen 
it in Italy. How did the recent revolution attempt to justify itself? By declaring that it 
represented the true will of the nation which had been falsified by parliament. Now 
even the revolution dared pronounce that sheer force could violate the will of the 
nation and that a legitimate power exists outside of this will. 

"The kings of old felt their responsible power to have been received from God, whereas 
the modern plebiscitarian dictator rules by the grace of the people. Their responsibility 
is toward the people which one has to treat alternatively with sugar and whip, with 
shrewdness and brutality. The 'contract' with God is of another nature." 

is9 "Napol6on III, in 1868, when he discovered that his rights to rule were being vigor- 
ously contested, had a book written, or wrote it himself, Les Titres de la Dynastie 
Napoleonienne. The motto prefixed to the book is Vox Populi, Vox Dei. Here it is 
shown historically that the French constitution of 1799, which called General Bonaparte 
as First Consul to the head of the French Government, was adopted with more than 
3,000,000 votes against 1500. The vote was repeated in 1848 when the Consul had him- 
self proclaimed Emperor, and the result was 4,500,000 "ayes" to 2500 "nays." On De- 
cember 10, 1848, Napoleon III was elected President with 5,430,000 votes against 
Cavaignac, who had 1,448,000 votes. On December 2, 1851, he was elected President 
for 10 years with 7,500,000 against 6,500,000; on December 2, 1852, when he was chosen 
as Emperor, the 'nays' had sunk to 253,000. Has history, and more especially democratic 
history, recognized here the expression of the will of the French people, which as such 
must be respected? On the contrary, the reign of both Napoleons has not been regarded 
in the least as the expression of popular will, but as despotism, 'sword rule,' 'tyranny.' " 
— Hans Delbriick, Government and Will of the People, trans, by Roy S. McElwee, 
New York, 1923, pp. 7-8. 

190 Years before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Miguel de Unamuno, dis- 
gusted with the compromising spirit of some Spaniards, wrote in his Vida de Don 
Quijote y Sancho: "Yes, that is what we need: a new civil war. It is urgent to declare 
that the basins are and ought to be helmets, and to start a row like that which occurred 
at the inn; a new civil war. Can you not hear those poor fellows of dry and shrivelled 
heart insisting that there are certain topics that ought to be avoided, saying over and 
over that these and other disputes lead to nothing practical? What do they mean by 
'practical'? 

"Pusillanimous whiners and howlers! Avoid religious questions! Give first attention 
to getting rich and powerful! The cowards cannot see that if we do not solve our more 
intimate problems, we are not powerful and rich and cannot become so. I repeat it: our 



360 APPENDIX I 

country will have no agriculture, no industries, no commerce, no roads that would lead 
whither it were well to go, until we attain and hold to our own Christianity, our 
quixotic kind of Christianity. We shall not have a rich exterior life, until we kindle in 
the hearts of our people the fires of eternal disquietudes. It is impossible to be rich 
while living a lie, and the lie is, for our spirit, our daily bread." — Miguel de Unamuno, 
The Life of Don Quixote and Sancho, trans, by Homer P. Earle (New York: Alfred A. 
Knopf, 1927), p. 293. 

191 Walter Lippmann writes in the Good Society: "It would require another Erasmus 
to depict the confusion engendered by this disorientation of the human mind. With 
man degraded to a bundle of conditioned reflexes, there was no measure of anything 
in human affairs: all the landmarks of judgment were gone and there remained only 
an aimless and turbulent moral relativity. Thus our contemporary culture has vacillated 
between a doctrine of human providence, holding at one moment that man's destiny is 
inexorably fixed and at another that it can be planned and managed. Such is the moral 
bewilderment that the historical determinists, who have nothing but scorn for the idea 
of free will, have become the protagonists of a consciously planned society in Russia, 
and the mystical collectivists who announced the manifest destiny of nations and tribes 
as corporate Leviathans have become the exponents of arbitrary personal leadership in 
Italy and Germany. Yet they are unabashed by their contradictions. For the denial of 
the human soul was the perfect preparation for these rivals of tyranny. Materialistic 
determinism is nothing but a secularization of religious determinism brought into the 
Occident by the sinister Genevan. Yet determinism permits different practical attitudes; 
it either leads to a shallow humanitarianism or to brutal terror. The former attitude is 
due to the denial of personal guilt, the latter is the result of the will to extermination 
which is the only way to deal with obnoxious and untractable animals." 

192 Leftists naturally hate ideological explanations. Thus in the New Republic, Oct. 
28, 1940, Sidney Hook wrote: "I am acquainted with no scientific historian who has 
asserted that the rise of Hitlerism is due to a philosophic doctrine rather than to the 
conjunctions of economic depression, the consequences of the Treaty of Versailles, the 
errors in policy of the democratic parties within Germany and of the democratic gov- 
ernments without." — Reply to Mortimer Adler's paper against the "professors." 

193 Totalitarianism can retain the terms "freedom" and "democracy" and give them 
its own meaning. 

See T. S. Eliot in "The Idea of a Christian Society." New York, 1940, p. 69. 

194 Jacob Burckhardt saw the coming menace which in his opinion would evolve from 
democracy and republicanism. He wrote in a letter to his friend Fredrich von Preen: 
"But it is as you say; the people are to be educated for mass meetings in good time. We 
shall get to the point where people will begin to howl if there are not at least 100 of 
them together." 

And on April 13 he wrote to Preen: "It has for some time been clear to me that the 
world is driving toward an alternative between complete democracy and absolute, law- 
less despotism; the latter, of course, would not be exercised by dynasties which are 
much too soft-hearted but by professedly republican military commands. But one does 
not yet like to picture a world whose rulers entirely disregard law, comfort, enriching 
labor and industry, credit, etc., and therefore can rule brutally." 

195 A few high lights from Lord Vansittart's Black Record: 

"The German is often a moral creature, the Germans never; and it is the Germans 
who count." 

"Within a short while from the time of Tacitus two further facts about the Germans 
became notorious, and have never varied since. The first was that they were out for 
ever more and more living space — the unlimited Lebensraum that they claim today 
For example, seventeen hundred years ago they were busy occupying Rumania (sic). 

"These fierce characteristics showed themselves to the full in the Thirty Years' war of 
the seventeenth century in the first phase of which Bohemia was overrun, and the 
Czech population subjected to a persecution almost equal to that of 1939. In this war 
the German commander Tilly distinguished himself by the sack of Magdeburg in which 



APPENDIX I 361 

30,000 people were butchered, rather less than were butchered at Rotterdam this year." 
(Czechs and Germans alike were persecuted. Victors were Austrians. Tilly never or- 
dered the sack of Magdeburg. Tilly was Fleming. Tilly's army was largely non-German. 
Magdeburgians were all Germans.) 
Catherine the Great was a Prussian. 

There are frequent citations of Latin authors. His Lordship always forgets that the 
Saxons and Angles left the Germanies 600 years after Caesar and Tacitus, in quest 
of more Lebensraum. The comic aspect of the booklet lies in the fact that Lord Van- 
sittart (von Sittart) is of German origin. (See Burke's Landed Gentry.) 

196 "Xhe fact is that for one hundred and fifty years these people have been a cancer 
in the world, and it is time they were removed. . . . The only decent reason for fighting 
is that there is something in the world you hate so much you can no longer live with 
it." — H. M. Harwood, "Playwright and Producer," in London Front, 1941. 

197 Hitler characterizes the soul of the masses (he had so efficiently misled) as "female": 
"Similar to women . . . the mass wants to be mastered and not implored and in its 
innermost is gratified by a teaching which does not suffer any other beside it more 
than by the granting of liberal freedom; the mass does not know how to use that free- 
dom and feels slightly abandoned. It feels the unabashed spiritual terror no more than 
it senses the revolting violation of its human liberty." — \Mein Kampf. 

Further reference material: 
On the modern Lutheran, etatistic mentality: 

Friedrich Gogarten, Wider die Achtung der Autoritat, Jena, 1931. 
On the "democratic" character of National Socialism: 

Pere Ducatillon, O.P., La guerre, cette revolution, New York, 1941, pp. 32-33. There 
this author cites in support of this view an article by J. T. Delos in La vie intellectuelle, 
Oct. 10, 1938. 
On the implications of the fact that the National Socialists won through the ballot: 

J. P. Mayer, Alexis de Tocqueville, New York, 1940, p. 203. 
On National Socialism in general: 

Rohan d'O. Butler, The Roots of National-Socialism, New York, 1942. The author 
belongs to the "ethnological" school which deducts N.S. from the German character. 
In his appendix, p. 300 ff., he brings a bibliography which he acknowledges to be rather 
limited. Of all the authors he quotes (the total number is 58) there are only six Cath- 
olics of whom two are French analysts. Yet the total percentage of Catholics of the 
German Nation is almost fifty. It shows clearly where the roots of National Socialism 
are to be found. 
On the independence of freedom from parliaments: 

Ernst Troeltsch, Die Bedeutung des Protestantismus fur die Entstehung der modernen 

Welt, Munchen, 1911, p. 102. 
On the participation of school teachers in the National-Socialist movement: 

Franz Neumann, Behemoth, New York, 1942, pp. 377, 379. On the class structure of 

the N. S. Party: p. 399. (Workers, 35 per cent; Lower Middle Class, 51 per cent; 

peasants, 7 per cent; higher middle class and aristocracy, 7 per cent.) 

On the identification of the "Nation" with the "Leader," Ibidem, p. 469. Quoting 

Gottfried Neesse, Fiihrergewalt, Tubingen, 1940. 
On Max Weber's prophecy of Nazism: 

Max Weber, Grundriss der Sozialokonomik III, Tubingen, 1922, p. 156. 
On National Socialism and Prussiandom: 

Carl Dyrssen, Die Botschaft des Ostens, Breslau, 1932, p. 186. ("Der National-Sozia- 

lismus ist die Urform des Preussentums.") 
Rosenberg and the "Syllabus" of Pope Pitts IX: 

Alfred Rosenberg. Mythus des XX. Jahrhunderts, Munchen, 1932, p. 467. ("Die ent- 

ehrendste Urkunde aller Zeiten.") 
On National Socialism and Scientism: 

See: the great attack of Martin Bormann (the successor of Hess as deputy leader 



362 APPENDIX I 

against Christianity as an unscientific superstition, recorded by the (London) Tablet, 
February 28, 1942, p. 110. 

On the impossibility of a sound, modern parliamentarian life: 
Carl Schmitt, Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus, 1926, p. 9. 

On the menace of a coming totalitarian terror: 
Jacob Burckhardt, Weltgeschichtlicke Betrachtungen, Berlin, 1905, pp. 171, 181. 

On the evolution of "liberalism" to totalitarianism: 
Styepan Trophimovitch, the old "liberal" reading a nihilistic book: 
"It's true that the author's basic idea is correct, but that only makes the situation 
worse. It's our own idea, no doubt; we were those who first sowed the seed and 
watched over it; indeed, they could have hardly said something new, after we had 
spoken. But, good Lord! Just look how they express themselves, how they distort 
and mutilate the truth! Were these really the final conclusions we were striving for? 
One can hardly recognize the original idea in that stuff!" (F. M. Dostoyevski, 
The Possessed.) 

Ill 

Mater Americae 

198 Modern historians, however, are not convinced that Magna Charta meant much 
to the mass of the English people of 12 IS or since. The tradition seems to have begun 
rather more than four centuries later. Professor A. F. Pollard, the historian, appears 
to have little sympathy with the customary ideas on the subject. The liberty which the 
barons extracted from the king, was, he says "liberty to every lord of the manor to try 
suits relating to property and possession in his own manorial court or to be punished by 
his fellow barons instead of by the judges of the king's court. 

"This is what the barons meant by their famous demand in Magna Charta for every 
man to be judged by his peers. They insisted that the royal judges were not their peers 
but only servants of the crown, and their demands in this respect were reactionary pro- 
posals which might have been fatal to liberty as we conceive it. 

"There is nothing about trial by jury or no taxation without representation in Magna 
Charta. Legally, the villeins, who were the bulk of the nation, remained after Magna 
Charta as before in the position of a man's ox or his horse, except that there was no law 
for the prevention of cruelty to animals." 

It would appear from this that the case for Magna Charta as the basis of democracy 
breaks down. — Gideon Clark, Democracy in the Dock. 

199 "Who are these Tories and Whigs ? Essentially they both belong to the same social 
layer, that today is agreed upon; the ones are aristocrats as much as the others." — 
Hans Delbriick, Historische und Politische Aufsatze, Berlin, 1907. 

200 Burke said in his Appeal From the New to the Old Whigs: "As in the abstract it 
is perfectly clear, that, out of a state of civil society, majority and minority are relations, 
which can have no existence, and that, in civil society, its own specific conventions in 
each corporation determine what it is that constitutes the people, so as to make their 
act the signification of the general will — to come to particulars it is equally clear that 
neither in France nor in England has the original or any subsequent compact of the 
state, expressed or implied, constituted a majority of men, told by the head, to be acting 
people of their several communities. And I see little of policy or utility as there is of 
right, in laying down on principle that a majority of men told by the head are to be 
considered as the people, and that as such their will is to be law." 

201 "Strange as it may seem, England, monarchistic and conservative to the marrow 
at home, has in her foreign relations always acted as the protector of the most dema- 
gogical tendencies, invariably encouraging all popular movements aiming at the weaken- 
ing of the monarchical principle." — Durnovo's Memorandum, February, 1914. From 
Documents of Russian History, by F. A. Golder, Stanford University Press, 1927. 

Durnovo, an ultraconservative, was hostile to the panslavist, herdist war party. The 



APPENDIX I 363 

Russian Conservatives did not in the least cherish the idea of a holy war in favor of 
the Karagjorgjevics and the French democracy. 

202 It is grimly amusing to read the decision of the Conference of Ambassadors, 
February, 1920, and April, 1921: 

"The Principal Allied Powers consider that the restoration of a dynasty which repre- 
sented in the eyes of its subjects a system of oppression and domination over other races, 
in alliance with Germany, would be incompatible with the achievements of the war in 
liberating peoples hitherto enslaved, as well with the principle for which the war was 
engaged." — From C. A. Macartney's Hungary. 

The same illiterate crowd reversed its whole policy one hour before the Anschluss; 
too late, of course, to influence the inexorable flux of events. The Progressivists had then 
the privilege to wage another war in order to create a Europe either resembling their 
fatal error of 1919 or even to "undo" all treaties of 1919 and to go back to 1914. 

203 Even the vision of Catholic historians becomes clouded if they once look beyond 
the Rhine into "darkest" Europe. Mr. Hilaire Belloc's repetition of the old accusation 
embodied in article 231 of the Versailles Treaty in his Short English History makes 
painful reading. His treatment of the Austro-Serbian conflict is perfectly ridiculous. The 
words of Kaunitz come to one's mind: "It is prodigious how much the English do not 
know of Europe." — (Cited by Seton-Watson in his Britain and the Dictators.) 

204 It is well to remember here the words of Edmund Burke in his "Appeal from the 
New to the Old Whig." One sees here clearly that even traditional Whiggism and modern 
party liberalism were not one and the same and that the monarchical principle used to 
be stronger among the old Whigs than among the Neo-Conservatives today. Burke 
wrote (about himself) : "He has studied the form and spirit of republics — but the 
result in his mind from that investigation has been and is, that neither England nor 
France, without infinite detriment to them, as well in the event as in the experiment, 
could be brought into a republican form; but that everything republican which can be 
introduced with safety, into either of them, must be built upon a monarchy — built 
upon a real, not a nominal monarchy, as its essential basis." (Italics ours.) 

Yet as we see the republican-aristocratic-plutocratic principles carried the more con- 
servative whigs further than they intended. Hilaire Belloc sees in monarchy a bulwark 
against plutocracy and that theme is well presented by Robert MacNair Wilson in his 
Monarchy or Money-Power. 

206 It is not only probable but even certain that the present war will have a lasting 
effect upon the plutocratic structure of the moneyed part of the British aristocracy. Yet 
the current indignation about the pluto-aristocratic leadership in the past has always 
been exaggerated by foreigners. 

206 G. M. Turnell's statement that St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher were the 
last Europeans in England was somehow premature. His criticisms are somehow justified 
for the immediate past but hardly for the present and future. He wrote: "When we 
come to consider life in concrete, we cannot help being struck by the divergencies be- 
tween the English way and the Catholic way. Fisher and More are far less representative 
of English life than Hobbes and Locke, or in the practical sphere than pirates and colo- 
nists like Drake and Clive, or record breakers like Sir Malcolm Campbell or Mrs. Molli- 
son. To turn the two saints into national heroes, or rather champions of English 
nationalism, is tantamount to make them the spiritual forefathers of empire builders 
and record breakers when in fact they stood for a way of life that was finally destroyed 
by imperialism and record breaking. It is, of course, a fundamental misunderstanding of 
their true significance. The significance of Fisher and More was that they were almost 
the last two great Europeans produced by these islands. They lost their heads because 
they stood for a faith which transcended boundaries of nationalism, because they would 
not let it degenerate into a national faith. In other words, they refused categorically to 
accept all that we understand by the English way. They were great because they were 
Europeans, not because they were Englishmen. Rather in spite of it. In the case of 
Drake and Clive, the fault lies precisely in the fact that they were English without being 
anything besides." — "The Real English Way," Colosseum. 



364 APPENDIX I 

207 So, too, republicanism is untraditional in Ireland in the sense that for the first 
hundred years or so of the modern Irish democracy — 1800 to 1916, when the Irish 
Republican Brotherhood stole Sinn Fein — the sole expressed and supported idea of the 
vast mass of the Irish people was for a hierarchical form of society, based on the status 
quo; for the fullest freedom of action and opinion; and for a native government of 
that order in peaceful union with Great Britain under the symbol of the Crown. — Sean 
O'Faolain, King of the Beggars (The Life of Daniel O'Connell) (New York, 1938) , p. 107. 

208 Britishers speak actually about "Europe," when they mean the Continent. John 
Maynard Keynes in his Economic Consequences of the Peace 1919 describes very aptly 
the differences between the continental and the British atmosphere twenty-two years ago: 

"For one who spent in Paris the greater part of his six months which succeeded the 
armistice an occasional visit to London was a strange experience. England still stands 
outside Europe. Europe's voiceless tremors do not reach her. Europe is apart and 
England is not of her flesh and body. But Europe is solid with herself. France, Germany, 
Italy, Austria, and Holland, Rumania and Russia and Poland throb together, they have 
rocked together in a war, which we, in spite of our enormous contributions and sacrifices 
(like though in a less degree than America), economically stood outside, and they may 
fall together. 

209 Gideon Clark in his Democracy in the Dock, takes a very pessimistic attitude to- 
ward his own nation by saying: "The British . . . have a profound and never-failing 
gift of being deceived by specious humbug. ... A recent Prime Minister accounted a 
great success in his day, worked steadily against their interests throughout his period of 
power, made the most amazing errors of judgment, was proved wrong by events again 
and again, yet remained with most of them trusted and liked because he seldom made 
a speech without telling them he was just a common Englishman like themselves, a 
hater of frills, pomp, and pretense, one who would infinitely rather spend his life in the 
fields of his native Worcestershire than in the seat of the mighty. The trick never failed ; 
is there any reason to suppose it will fail the next time it is played? Are other nations 
so simple, so easily beguiled? It is difficult to know. Certain it is that healthy skepticism 
has no root in the English mind." 

TV 

The American Scene 

210 "The social forces behind the American movement were aristocratic and mercantile. 
The merchants of New England joined hands with the landed proprietors of the South, 
both confident there was room for each in a world new and unscarred by European 
traditions. Both were oblivious of the coming manufacturing caste that was to make 
them implacable enemies. Nothing can be less true than the popular idea that the Amer- 
ican Republic was the product of men longing for radical democracy." — James N 
Wood, Democracy and the Will to Power, New York, 1921, pp. 50-51. 

an "This feeling remained so strong through the early part of the Revolution that the 
President of Princeton University (John Witherspoon) believed the common hatred of 
Popery caused by the Quebec Act the only thing which cemented the divergent religious 
groups in the colonies together sufficiently to allow them to make war, an opinion which 
was shared by English observers." — Ray Allen Billington, quoting Daniel Barber's 
History of My Own Times (Washington, 1827) in his The Protestant Crusade, 1800- 
1860 (New York: Macmillan, 1938). 
On page 17 of this work are the following lines, sung during the Revolution: 

If Gallic Papists have the right 

To worship their own way 

Then farewell to the liberties 

Of poor America. 
Also a part of John Trumbull's "McFingal" is quoted where George III is accused in 
the following terms: 



APPENDIX I 365 

Struck bargains with the Romish churches 

Infallibility to purchase. 

Set wide for Popery the door. 

Made friends with Babel's scarlet whore. 

212 One hears sometimes in American Catholic circles the cryptic remark that the 
American Constitution is finally based on St. Robert Bellarmine's "democratic" ideology. 
In support of this theory, the fact is mentioned that one found the collected works of 
the Great Saint in Jefferson's library. Yet the truth boils down to the fact that one dis- 
covered merely a volume of Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarcha or the Natural Power of 
Kings, an apology of absolute monarchy containing slighting remarks on Bellarmine (on 
pp. 8, 9). There is practically no evidence that Jefferson read this book with great 
attention, except a pencil stroke. (See also David S. Schaff, The Bellarmine-Jefferson 
Legend and the Declaration of Independence.) 

St. Robert Bellarmine's political thought differs strongly from modern or classic 
democratic ideas. His attack against the absolutistic tendencies of James I do not make 
him a "democrat." He concedes that a people without government has the right to 
choose a government: the best form of government in his eyes is nevertheless a 
monarchy with certain checks. The people has surrendered its sovereignty and transferred 
it to the king. (Potestas populi . . . donee earn in regem aliquem transtulit.) See also 
his Apologia 13, op. t, XII. The monarchy is thus for him "the best and outstanding 
form of government {Optimum et praestantisimum regimen). Democracy on the other 
hand is deterrimum regimen. He attacked Calvin bitterly for his republican tendencies. 
The check on a monarch he considered merely utilius (more expedient). The ideal 
monarch for him was a person qui omnibus imperat ac nulli subiiciatur. 

See also Pere Joseph de la Serviere, S.J., "Les idees politiques du Cardinal Bellarmin." 
Revue des questions historiques. Tome xxxvii-xxxviii, who calls St. Robert Bellarmine: 
"risolumment Monarchiste." 

St. Robert Bellarmine said very clearly in De Ecclesiastica Monorchia I, that: 

Propter naturae humanae corruptionem utilius esse censemus hominibus hoc tem- 
pore (!) monarchiam temperatam ex aristocratia et democratia. 

Hoc tempore clearly means the period in which he lived and which still stood under 
the deep impression of the reformation and its caesaropapism. When the saint extolls 
the "democratic" element in the election of crowned heads he cites immediately the 
modus of election of the Holy Roman Emperors by the princely electors, a process 
which can hardly be called "democratic" (in Recognitio Ltbri Tertii de Laicis). He also 
says explicitly in De Laicis VII: 

"To be ruled by a superior is not contrary however to human liberty, dignity and 
equality. Only the despot offends thus . . . even in the state of innocence there would 
have been political subjection, there would have been a difference of sexes, faculties and 
power; therefore an order of precedence and subjection. Among the angels there is a 
hierarchy of order with precedence and succession; why not among men? Therefore it 
is not contrary to liberty, nor humiliating to the dignity of man to be ruled by his 
legitimate superiors. . . . There is a difference between political subjection and servile 
subjection. 

St. Robert Bellarmine's Apologia was finally dedicated to the Emperor Rudolf II. 
and the idea expressed in Chapter XIII of his De Potestate Papae in Rebus Temporalibus, 
that the Pope might depose a Catholic "prince" (Emperor, King, President) for grave 
reasons and order the people to elect somebody else would surely not gain the full 
admiration of, let us say, Mexican, Peruvian, or Chilean progressive democrats. 

Thomas Jefferson had furthermore nothing but bitter contempt for the Society of 
Jesus as such, of which Bellarmine was a member. In a letter to John Adams, replying 
to his predecessor's charges against the Society ("If there ever was a body of men who 
merited eternal damnation on earth and in hell, it is this Society of Loyola's"), he wrote: 
"Like you I disapprove of the restauration of the Jesuits, for it means a step backwards 
from light into darkness." (Quot. by Ren6 FUIop-Miller, The Power and Secret of the 
Jesuits.) 



366 APPENDIX I 

Thus we can hardly expect Jefferson to have willfully copied the basis of the American 
Constitution from one of the representants of Darkness. The efforts to prove the con- 
trary remind one of the painful impression which the copy of the Magna Charta at the 
New York World's Fair left in one's mind. According to eyewitnesses it was exhibited 
under a transparent inscription "Democracy." 

213 "Xhe basis of the American system is a written constitution, a paper formulated 
by men of an extreme conservativism and plainly distrustful of the people. This is 
shown by the carefully developed checks to spontaneous action ; the method of balancing 
one branch against another." — James N. Wood, Democracy and the Will Power, New 
York, 1921, pp. 48, 49. 

214 "Now the basis upon which the Puritan political system was founded was that 
the Church members alone could have political rights. This ensured that the Puritan 
commonwealth could be nothing but an oligarchy. As wealth was one of the criteria 
(though by no means the only one) on the basis of which it was determined whether 
one belonged to the 'elect,' the commonwealth was necessarily controlled by the 
wealthy. Puritan rule was the rule of an economic and religious elite. This explains why 
typical Puritans in America, such as Winthrop and Cotton, denounced democracy. 
Winthrop declared that democracy was 'the meanest and worst of all forms of govern- 
ment,' inasmuch as there was 'no such government in Israel,' and he objected to 'refer- 
ring matter of council and judiciature to the body of the people, quia the best part is 
always the least, and of that best part the wiser part is always the lesser.' Since the 
'elect,' the 'saints' were necessarily a minority, it was obvious to Puritans that political 
rights could be exercised only by a minority." — P. Kecskemeti, Political Thought in 
America, in J. P. Mayer's, Political Thought, New York, 1940. 

215 "I know no country where public esteem is so attached to worth, regardless of 
wealth, as it is in America." — Jefferson to Mrs. Church, 1793. 

216 "Throughout the Union property qualifications were required for the suffrage as 
well as for holding office. In New York, in a population of about 30,000, according to 
the census of 1790, there were only 1209 freemen valued at $100 or more, 1221 valued 
at $20, and 2661 'Forty Shilling Freeholders.' " — P. Kecskemeti, Political Thought in 
Amerifa. 

217 "Democracy has never been and never can be so desirable as aristocracy or 
monarchy, but while it lasts it is more bloody than either. Remember, democracy never 
lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy 
that did not commit suicide." — John Adams, quoted by W. E. Woodward, A New 
American History," p. 253. 

218 Both Rousseau and Jefferson are more clearly Republicans, or constitutionalists, 
than they are democrats; although it might be argued from Rousseau's attack on slavery 
that he might have urged the justice of universal suffrage; and there is some positive 
evidence, both from Jefferson's opposition to negro slavery and to his remarks on 
suffrage, that Jefferson was much more of a democrat than was John Adams and the 
New England aristocrats on the one hand, or Hamilton, Madison and Jay, the protec- 
tors of the propertied minority, on the other. But the dawn of American democracy 
really begins with Jackson." — Mortimer Adler, "In Terms of What Moral Principle 
Is Democracy the Best Government?" in Philosophy of the State. Reprinted, by 
permission, from the Fifteenth Annual Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosoph- 
ical Association, Washington, D. C, December 28 and 29, 1939, page 163. 

219 ". . . But the great thing about it is equality. To begin with, the level of educa- 
tion, science and talent is lowered. A high level of education and science is only possible 
for great intellects, and they are not wanted. The great intellects have always seized 
the power and been despots. Great intellects can not help being despots and they've 
always done more harm than good. They will be banished or put to death. Cicero will 
have his tongue cut out, Copernicus will have his eyes put out, Shakespeare will be 
stoned — that's Shigalovism. Hahahal Do you think it's strange? I am for Shigalovism." 
— F. M. Dostoyevski, The Possessed, trans, by Constance Garnett, Modern Library, 
1936, New York. 



APPENDIX I 367 

220 Rigorous in his condemnation of the educational system is Dr. Caspar Kraemer, 
Professor of New York University, as quoted in the New York Times, Mar. 12, 1939: 

"We spend more money than any other nation in the world to get an inferior product. 
The democracy of our education consists of the regimentation of all students, no matter 
what their degree of proficiency, upon a single level, which must of necessity be low 
if it concerns itself only with those needs of the best students which are common to 
the worst." 

Professor Virginius Dabney (University of Virginia) in an essay on "Spurious 
Democracy" states: 

"The malady is doubtless due to numerous causes. But perhaps a certain conception 
of 'democracy' underlies more than one of them. The notion that one man is just as 
good as another and perhaps a little better has something to do with it. . . . One curse 
of American life is the subordination of quality to quantity. Our educational system 
would be much better if there were fewer but better schools and colleges, fewer but 
better paid teachers in the schools, fewer but better paid professors in the universities 
with only half the number of students." 

Not less outspoken is President Robert Maynard Hutchins of the University of 
Chicago who wrote the following cruel words: 

"Since our students have lived up to our expectations, we have succeeded in post- 
poning maturity to a date undreamed of in the Middle Ages, or ever in Europe today. 
The American college senior is two or three years less grown up than his French or 
British contemporary. In ability to use his mother tongue and the other instruments of 
intellectual operation he does not at all compare with them. — "Education for Freedom," 
Harpers Magazine, October, 1941. On the educational crisis in the modern world see 
P. Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics, IV, pp. 259 ff. 

221 Cf. James N. Wood, Democracy and the Will to Power, New York, 1921, pp. 
175, 176. 

222 Professor Willard Waller has called this the "rating and dating complex" and de- 
scribes how it works in one college. Every student should read this article. 

"The students in many colleges, such as the one described by Waller, are motivated by 
a strong desire to rise in their social status. That is the only reason some of them are 
in college. It is therefore important to 'date' with students of the opposite sex who 
stand as high as possible in the social scale. Fraternities and sororities add explicitness 
to this scale and intensity to the struggle. Students near the 'top' have more invitations 
and social opportunities than they can handle. Those near the 'bottom' are often de- 
prived of companionship, because, if they still have hopes of climbing, they dare not 
too often or openly admit their low status by dating with someone recognized as inferior. 
The misfits, the unattractive, the unpopular do not pair off as easily or frequently as 
do the attractive and popular." — Plan for Marriage, by Joseph Kirk Folsom, Editor. 

See also: Willard Waller, "The Rating and Dating Complex," American Sociological 
Review, 22:727-734 (1937). 

223 "In Spain — and this is another paradox about Spain — the national holiday 
called fiesta de la raza is really a fiesta de la non-raza, a celebration of the international 
mixture of races among Hispanic nations in the best Spanish, antiracial tradition. It 
considers the distinction between races a sin. This tradition is essentially Christian. It is 
a genius of fraternal enthusiasm. The Spaniard of old had no inhibition toward marriage 
with colored women and the procreation of mestizos. 

"For the Spaniards the Jewish problem has never been a racial one and will never 
be. It is an exclusively religious question." — Ernesto Ximenez Caballero, in an article 
in Anti-Europea, specially devoted to the race question. 

224 "Xhe American mob's grim reputation for sheer anthropoid savagery is equaled 

only by that of the revolutionary mobs of Paris. At the outset of the German Govern- 
ment's movement against the Jews, an American visitor asked Herr Hitler why he was 
making it so ruthless. The Reichskanzler replied that he had got the idea from us. 
Americans, he said, are the great rope and lamppost artists of the world, known of all 
men as such. He was using the same methods against the Jews that we used against 



368 APPENDIX I 

the loyalists of '76, the Indians, the Chinese on the Western coast, the Negroes, the 
Mexicans, the Filipinos — every helpless people in fact whom we had ever chanced to 
find underfoot." — A. J. Nock, "The Jewish Problem in America," Atlantic Monthly, 
June, 1941. 

225 Cf. Henry Belcher, The First American Civil War, London, 1911. I, p. S6. 

226 A nice little sketch about the iniquities of Negro life by a correspondent, "V.S.Y.," 
can be found in The New Republic, January 13, 1941. 

A fuller account about the history of lynching can be found in Frank Shay's excellent 
book: Judge Lynch, his first 100 years (New York, 1938). The unspeakable horror 
these pages conjure bear hardly the printer's ink. The details of the lynching are of 
an obscenity which surpass human imagination (pp. 96, pp. 104-116). Three cases 
deserve special mentioning; the expectant Negro mother who was "carved up," Dan 
Davis the Texan Negro who shouted from the stake: "I wish some of you gentlemen 
would be Christian enough to cut my throat" (p. 118) and the attorney of Colorado 
County (Texas) who declared: "I don't call the citizens who executed the Negroes 
(aged IS and 16) a mob. I consider their act an expression of the will of the people." 
Ochlocratic sentiments are seldom expressed so neatly! 

227 About the lack of anti-Jewish sentiment in the young American Republic see: 
Dixon Wecter, The Saga of American Society (A Record of Social Aspiration, 1607- 
1937) (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1937), pp. 1S2, 153. 

228 "Business is religion and religion is business" preached the Reverend Maltbie D. 
Babcock of the Brick Presbyterian Church in New York in 1900." — Dixon Wecter, 
The Saga of American Society, New York, 1937, p. 481. 

229 Professor A. Peers once was addressed by a beggar in Madrid in the following 
words: "An aim, for the love of God, who in the bloom of my youth deprived me of 
the love for work." ("Una limosna por el amor de Dios, que en la plenitud de mi 
juventud me ha quitado la gana de trabajar.") — From A. Peers, Spain. 

This could certainly not happen in a progressive, Calvinistic country. 

230 "Turn now to Germany, a country lately delivered from despotism by the arms 
of altruistic heroes. The social legislation of that country for more than half a century, 
afforded a model to all other countries. All the workingmen's insurance, minimum wage, 
child labor and other such acts of the United States are bald imitations of it, and in 
England before the war, the mountebank Lloyd George borrowed his whole bag of 
tricks from it. Well, Dr. Hans Delbruck, in his Regierung tind Volkswille, tells us that 
this legislation was fought step by step at home, and with the utmost ferocity, by the 
beneficiaries of it. When Bismarck formulated it and essayed to get it through the 
Reichstag he was opposed by every mob-master in the Empire, save only his kept 
Socialist, Ferdinand Lasalle. The common people were so heavily against him for 
several years that he had to carry on the government without the consent of the 
Reichstag — that is, unconstitutionally, and at the rick of his head." — H. L. Mencken, 
Notes on Democracy. 

231 Herbert Spencer in his essay: "The Coming Slavery" has aptly described the 
viciousness of "popular" representation in Germany in its quest for "popularity." 

232 "In the world of politics, the chances of getting imbecile leaders under an elective 
system could be considerably reduced by applying to politicians a few of those tests 
for intellectual, physical and moral fitness which we apply to the candidates for almost 
every other kind of job. Imagine the outcry if hotelkeepers were to engage servants 
without demanding a 'character' from their previous employers; or if sea-captains 
were chosen from homes for inebriates; or if railway companies entrusted their trains 
to locomotive engineers with arterio-sclerosis and prostrate trouble; or if civil servants 
were appointed and doctors allowed to practice without passing an examination! And 
yet, where the destinies of whole nations are at stake, we do not hesitate to entrust 
the direction affairs to men of notoriously bad character; to men sodden with alcohol; 
to men so old and infirm that they can't do their work or even understand what it is 
about; to men without ability or even education." — Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means, 
Chatto and Windus (London), 1937, p. 174. 



APPENDIX I 369 

233 Cf. Georg Simmel, Soziologie, Leipzig, 1908, p. 138. 

234 Cf. Moises Yakovlevitch Ostrogorski, Democracy and the Organization of Political 
Parties, trans, by F. Clarke, New York, 1902. 

235 "Espece de depute" was the last word of abuse which a French cabdriver could 
find from a vocabulary of invective unrivaled in any language except American." — 
Douglas Jerrold, Britain and Europe: 1900-1940 (London: Collins, 1941), p. 25. 

236 In St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Bk. I, Ch. IV, we find an ex- 
cellent account of why man endowed with an intelligent reason seldom makes full use 
of it. He cites lack of interest, lack of time and lack of energy as main reasons for 
this inertia. 

237 "What we need in every executive department in Washington is a solid body of 
permanent undersecretaries, clerks, and other employees, well and broadly trained and ir- 
removable, except for cause — and change in administration is not an adequate cause. 
We want 'careermen' not alone in the diplomatic and consular service, but in every 
department of Government." — Ralph Adams Cram, The End of Democracy (Boston: 
Marshall Jones Co., 1937), pp. 216-217. 

Cf. also Letters from a Chinese Official, Anonymous, New York, 1912, p. 45. 

238 "The experience of thousands of years teaches that the overwhelming majority of 
peoples does not take sufficient interest in the state to be able to form well-founded 
opinions concerning either persons or bills to cast its vote accordingly. ... In most elec- 
tions, except those of rare popular interests, the party that succeeds through some means 
or other in hauling a crowd of absolutely indifferent men to the polls is the party that 
wins. Is it then the people's will that has become manifest through this election? We 
find ourselves in an evident dilemma. If no parties existed, the vote would be so small 
that there could be no question of an action of the people. If we have parties, it is true, 
they drag the people onto the stage, but the verdict is pronounced by the powers, who 
understand how to induce those who have no opinion of their own to vote in the way 
desired." — Hans Delbriick, Government and Will of the People, trans, by Roy S. 
MacElwee (New York: Oxford University Press, 1923), p. 14. 

238 About the type of bureaucratic "manager" and his increasing importance see James 
Burnham, The Managerial Revolution, New York, 1941, pp. 254, 255. 

240 About the thirst for "Success" and the competitive spirit in their relation to crime 
see: Morris Ploscowe, "Crime in a Competitive Society," The Annals of the American 
Academy of Political and Social Science, September, 1941. 

241 A record in preaching was established eight years ago by the Reverend S. Brown 
of Mount Zion Baptist Church in Washington, D. C. The learned pastor spoke 88,794 
words in 12 hours and 10 minutes. This record was beaten by the Reverend N. Lee in his 
little Emmanuel Temple in Los Angeles, who spoke over 200,000 words in 21 hours, 
20 minutes. 

242 There is naturally also another angle to this problem which has been well brought 
out by Professor John U. Nef, in "Civilization at the Crossroads, II," The Review of 
Politics, October, 1941, p. 463. 



The American Tragedy 

243 "F or the Liberal the spiritual center of gravity was in the individual, and the realm 
of private opinion and private interests was the ideal world. Hence, when the Liberal 
spoke of religion as a purely private matter it was in compliment rather than in deroga- 
tion. To separate the Church from the State — to keep religion out of politics, was to 
elevate it to a higher sphere of spiritual values. But today in the democratic world, 
these values have been reversed. The individual life has lost its spiritual primacy, and it 
is social life which has now the higher prestige, so that to treat religion as a purely 
individual and personal matter is to deprive it of actuality and to degrade it to a lower 
level of value and potency. To keep religion out of public life is to shut it up in a 



370 APPENDIX I 

stuffy Victorian back drawing room with the aspidistras and antimacassars, when the 
streets are full of life and youth. And the result is that the religion of the Church becomes 
increasingly alienated from real life while democratic society creates a new religion of the 
street and the forum to take its place." — Christopher Dawson, Beyond Politics (New 
York: Sheed & Ward, 1938) . 

244 Paragraph VI, Thesis 55, Syllabus of Pope Pius IX, condemned the following 
assertion: "The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the 
Church." — (Allocution Acerbissimam of Sept. 27, 18S2.) 

245 "The curious Jansenist condition of modern Catholic Ireland" and the low-Church 
mentality of America is well discussed by Sean O'Faolain, in King of the Beggars (The 
Life of Daniel O'Connell), New York, 1938, p. 14. 

Sigrid Undset, herself a Catholic convert is even more outspoken in her condemnation 
of Catholic Puritanism in America. Cf. her Men, Women and Places, New York, 
1939, p. 108. 

246 The American version or application of that culture [i.e., Catholic culture] has set 
the novelist an almost impossible task. This can be seen, I think, if we turn to an examina- 
tion of the attitude of Catholic readers. That attitude has reflected all too often a Cath- 
olic social consciousness that is tinged with excessive touchiness, with readiness to see 
offense and insults everywhere, with puritanism, which all spring, I fear, from an in- 
feriority complex. Willy-nilly, our authors have bent to these cramping winds, to the 
detriment of their art. — Harold C. Gardiner, S.J., in "Reader-Hazard," America, Vol. 
LXV, No. 22. 

A valid criticism of Catholic-American itroitesse has been made by Father Victor 
Dillard, S.J., in "Jeunesse Catholique en Amtrique," £tudes, April 5, 1940. 

247 To give only a few names of leading British Catholics in the past 60 years (converts 
italicized) : 

Cardinal Newman Fr. W. Orchard Alfred Noyes 

Cardinal Wiseman T. S. Gregory A. J. Cronin 

Cardinal Manning Douglas Jerrold Francis Thompson 

Baron von Hiigel Bernard Wall Coventry Patmore 

Lord Acton Christopher Dawson D. B. Wyndham Lewis 

G. K. Chesterton Christopher Hollis J. B. Morton 

Maurice Baring Douglas Woodruff Bede Jarrett, O.P. 

Evelyn Waugh Eric Gill Algernon Cecil 

R. H. Benson Arnold Lunn Deathbed converts: 

Sheila Kaye-Smith Hilaire Belloc Oscar Wilde 

Compton Mackenzie Wilfrid Ward Frank Harris 

Graham Greene C. C. Martindale, S.J. 

E. I. Watkin Ronald Knox 

248 The Reverend William Ayer, himself a Baptist, complained in a sermon (Mar. 21, 
1937) about the attitude of liberal Protestantism which is organized within the frame- 
work of the Federal Council of Churches. He said: "Liberal Protestantism is in many 
instances taking on itself the cloak and spirit of a mild communism. And the Federal 
Council more often speaks the communist shibboleth than the Gospel one. Liberal 
Protestantism, or Modernism, is far from defenseless. It has not only the capable organ- 
ization backing of the Federal Council and affiliated organizations and movements, but 
it has the financial backing of the Rockefeller millions and other wealth not to mention 
the extreme socialist group throughout the land." (Cf. New York Times, March 22, 1937.) 

A characteristic representative of this group is the bimonthly The Protestant (formerly 
Protestant Digest) which combines enthusiastic pro-Bolshevism with furious anti- 
Catholicism. 

249 See the outstanding excerpts from "The Bible up to date" by Dr. William L. Bailey, 
Northwestern University professor, Newsweek, Dec. 4, 1939. 

250 «As late as the year 1777 the city of Birmingham refused to have a theater as it 
would encourage 'laziness' and therefore impede trade." Max Weber, Die Protestantische 
Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus. 



APPENDIX I 371 

The hostility of the Puritans and Protestant extremists, all forerunners of our capital- 
istic system against phantasy and its products, was simply unbelievable. Not only did 
they view with mistrust the theater but also the novel and 'fiction' in general had to 
suffer. (There is still a fair amount of contempt for the writer and reader of 'fiction,' 
which the German calls Romane — implying the romantic element in that product of 
art.) The Reverend Richard Baxter (middle of the seventeenth century) wrote in his 
Christian Directory, Ch. VIII, Part 6, a passionate attack against novels. 

Even Orestes Brownson was affected by his Protestant environment. See Works XIX, 
pp. 225, 226. 

251 "The pride of caste is becoming the pride of taste; but, as before, it is averse to 
the mass of men; it consents to know them only in some conventionalized and artificial 
guise. It seeks to withdraw itself, to stand aloof; to be distinguished and not to be 
identified. Democracy in literature is the reverse of this all." — William Dean Howells, 
Criticism and Fiction, New York, 1891, p. 180. 

This tallies with Anatole France's criticism of the aesthetic deficiencies of the Third 
Republic. (See J. J. Brousson, Anatole France en pantouffles, Paris, 1924, p. 67.) 

252 ". . . All the great things on this Earth begin with a dream. 'Woe to him who has 
never dreamt,' it has been written. One does not rise to heaven without passing through 
the clouds." — Gustave Thibon, Etudes Carmilitaines. 

253 "t romanticise is to give a higher sense to the common, to give the dignity of the 
unknown to the known, to touch with a ray of eternity all that is limited in time." — 
Novalis. 

254 Cf. Just Havelaar, Democratic, Arnhem, 1920. 

255 "Our unemployed millions are endemic. Our cities strictly built for a profit of a 
minority have for the majority banished relaxation and peace. Our mechanized and com- 
mercialized pleasures have shrunk the individual human being and created a mass mind 
as dangerously prone to demagogic doctrine in our terms as the oppressed Italians and 
Germans. Does anyone believe that the American millions think straighter than Europe's 
millions — or are being taught to think straight on a regimen of movies, radios, and 
popular novels — with the schools and universities taking their cues from the col- 
umnists?" — Waldo Frank, Chart for Rough Water, New York, 1940. 

256 Similar phenomena can be witnessed in England where the speaker of the Con 
gregationalist Convention declared in October, 193S, in the presence of Bishop Barnes of 
the Church of England that he expects to see the day when "His Majesty's Communist 
Government" will be established in the British Isles. One of the most active members 
of the "Friends of the Soviet Union," the Dean of Canterbury, declared solemnly that 
the Soviet Union is the greatest Christian experiment of all times. 

257 The infantilism of the American masses is well analyzed by John U. Nef's, "On the 
Future of American Civilization," The Review of Politics, Vol. II, No. 3. 

258 Cf. Lewis Mumford, "The Passive Barbarian," in Atlantic Monthly, September, 1940. 

259 Peter Viereck sees the danger in America very clearly. "Germany was historically 
ahead of us," he writes in his Metapolitics (New York, 1941), "in being ripe for 
Fascism. We in America can expect similar developments from similar causes. These 
causes are more basic and world-wide than Versailles; an overmechanized and overspe- 
cialized industrial society is spawning mass men, instead of responsible, self-disciplined 
individuals rooted in the universal moral values." 

Cf. Alain Locke from Howard University in a lecture: "Pluralism and Intellectual 
Democracy" at the Conference on Science, Philosophy, and Religion, September, 1941. 

260 1 am not concerned with the problem of Christians as a persecuted minority. When 
the Christian is treated as an enemy of the State, his course is very much harder, but it 
is simpler. I am concerned with the dangers to the tolerated minority ; and in the modern 
world it may turn out that the most intolerable thing for Christians is to be tolerated. 
— T. S. Eliot, The Idea of a Christian Society. 

281 Aristotle, like Plato, has clearly foreseen the dangerous developments from democ- 
racy as well as the ultimate danger itself. Cf. Aristotle, Politics, V, vii, 18; also V, ix. 



PART IV 
THE ISSUE 



Communism 
262 Socialists and Communists of middle-class or Plutocratic background: 



Karl Marx 

Lasalle 

Robert Blum 

Leon Blum 

Plyekhanov 

Lenin 

Trotzki 

Earl Browder 

Bukharin 

Rykov 

B61a Kun 

Kurt Eisner 

Levin6 

Socialists and Communists 

John Strachey 

Dzerzynski 



Karl Radek 
Krassin 
Zinovyev 
Kamyenev 
Litvinov 
Molotov 
Dovgalyevski 
Otto Bauer 
Karl Seitz 
Julius Deutsch 
Willi MUnzenberg 
Barbusse 
Malraux 
of the nobility: (Gentry). 
Tukhatchevsky 
Chicherin 



Largo Caballero 

I. Prieto 

Engels 

Romain Rolland 

Sir Stafford Cripps 

Yoffe 

Karl Liebknecht 

Rakovsky 

Naomi Mitchison 

Stephen Spender 

Charles Fourier 

Corliss Lamont 



Bakunin (Anarchist) 
St. Simon 



263 Cf. Analysis of Work in Christian and bourgeois perspectives by P. Lafargue in 
L'Origine ed evoluzione della proprieta, Palermo, 1896. 

264 Bolshevism actually promises to make everybody a state employee and thus to 
assure the maximum of social security. That tendency was always strong in the European 
bourgeoisie. Even Herbert Spencer complained about it in his essay "The Coming 
Slavery." Yet he made the mistake of considering this craving for government jobs as a 
desire for an increased dignity. Primarily it was something else — the nostalgia for 
security; the added dignity of a state priesthood was of secondary value. Spencer writes: 
"And in Russia where that universality of State-regulation which characterizes the mili- 
tant type of society has been carried furthest, we see this ambition pushed to its extreme. 
Says Mr. Wallace, quoting a passage from a play: 'All men, even shopkeepers and cob- 
blers, aim at becoming officers, and the man who has passed his whole life without official 
rank seems to be not a human being.' " 

To be financially secure, to wear the uniform and to have a safe position; this bour- 
geois idea of the West grew on eastern soil in tropical richness and splendor. A similar 
evolution could be observed in Hungary where the biztos kis Alias (the secure little 
position) is valued by the bourgeoisie beyond anything else. Count Keyserling in his 
Europe overrates the aristocratic essence of modern East Central Europe considerably. 

265 Dr. Waldemar Gurian is therefore entirely correct when he writes: "Bolshevism is 
at once the product of the bourgeois society and the judgment upon it. It reveals the 
goal to which the secret philosophy of that society leads, if accepted with unflinching 

372 



APPENDIX I 373 

logic," Bolshevism — Theory and Practice (New York: Macmillan, 1932), pp. 237-238. 

This statement is also well illustrated by E. v. Kuehnelt-Leddihn in an article "We're 
All Marxists Now," Colosseum, April-June, 1939. 

Christopher Dawson describes the interrelationship of the modern bourgeois ochlo- 
cratic world in his Enquiries Into Religion and Culture with the following unmistakable 
words: "The Bolshevik philosophy is simply the reductio ad absurdum of the principles 
implicit in bourgeois culture and consequently it provides no real answer to the weak- 
nesses and deficiencies of the latter. It takes the nadir of the European spiritual develop- 
ment for the zenith of the new order." 

266 "If one walks through the streets of St. Petersburg and scrutinizes the faces it is 
easy to guess who is a communist. These faces are not characterized by lecherous satisfac- 
tion or animalistic callousness but by boredom, the truly transcendental boredom of the 
"Paradise on Earth," of the "Empire of the Antichrist." — Dimitri Myerezhkovsky, 
The Realm of the Antichrist. 

267 "for men love one another with a spiritual love only when they have suffered the 
same sorrow together, when through long days they have ploughed the stony ground 
bowed beneath the common yoke of a common grief. It is then that they know one 
another and feel one another, and feel with one another. In their common anguish, they 
pity one another and they love one another. For to love goes with pity and if bodies are 
united by pleasure, souls are united by pain." — Miguel de Unamuno, Tragic Sense of 
Life, trans, by Crawford Fitch, London, 1921. 

268 "If any one requires to be convinced that speculative thought is one of the chief 
elements of social power, let him bethink himself of the age in which there was scarcely 
a throne in Europe which was not filled by a liberal and reforming king, a liberal and 
reforming Emperor, or, strangest of all, a liberal and reforming pope; the age of 
Frederick the Great, of Catherine II, of Joseph II, of Peter Leopold, of Benedict XIV, 
of Ganganelli, of Pombal, of d'Aranda; when the very Bourbons of Naples were liberals 
and reformers, and all the active minds among the noblesse of France were filled with 
the ideas which were soon after to cost them so dear. Surely a conclusive example how 
far mere physical and economic power is not being the whole of social power." — John 
Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government (New York, 1882), p. 24. 
(This is a good refutation of environmentalism and the marxist overestimation of self- 
interest.) 



II 

World War II 

269 Genuine German conservatism abhorred the idea of the domination of one nation 
over the other. Cf. Eugen Diesel, Vom Verhangnis der Vblker, 1934, p. 113. 

270 "Burkhardt in his first great historical work, devoted to the period of Constantine 
the Great (1852), saw this coming era of terribles simplificateurs as one in which some 
'great handsome fellow with the talents of a subordinate officer' would introduce barbar- 
ism. Then naked power alone would rule and the whole culture of Europe — religion, 
morals, education — would be overwhelmed in its mighty waves." — J. P. Mayer, 
Political Thought. 

271 Cf. Robert Michels, Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demokratie, 
Leipzig, 1911, pp. 67, 68. 

272 "For Tocqueville was a liberal of the purest breed — a Liberal and nothing else, 
deeply suspicious of democracy and its kindred, equality, centralization and utilitarian- 
ism."^ — Lord Acton, Lectures on the French Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1910), 
p. 357. 

Views similar to those expressed by de Tocqueville can be found in Donoso Cortes 
famous "Discurso" (Jan. 4, 1849, in Oeuvres, I, Paris, 1858). 

273 "Xhe proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not 



374 APPENDIX I 

true. They are the worst conceivable, they are not keepers at all; they can neither judge, 
act, think, or will, as a political body. Individuals have conquered themselves; nations 
and large bodies never." — John Adams, "Defence of the Constitution," etc., as well as 
Vol. IV of Works. 

274 The present Third Reich (June, 1941, minus Alsace and the "General Govern- 
ment," South Styria and Slovakia) has a population of 96 millions of whom 45 millions 
are Protestants, 48 million Catholics and 3 million non-Christian. If we add the above 
mentioned territories we have 45 million Protestants against 60 million Catholics. Protes- 
tant to Catholic birth rate is in the relation of 10 to 18. 

276 We find a good case for a German monarchy in the successful book of one of the 
collaborators of the liberal Manchester Guardian, He wrote in 1934: "By fastening the 
main responsibility for war on the Kaiser, the Allied and Associated Powers instilled into 
the German people the belief that if this brilliant but irascible and flighty person (who 
with different advisers, might have been a very good monarch) were eliminated, they 
would obtain more tolerable peace terms, and that reconciliation between victors and van- 
quished would be made much easier. The Kaiser was chiefly dethroned by Anglo-Amer- 
ican propaganda, and, his son being depicted as only second to himself as a monster of 
wickedness by that same propaganda, the succession was also made difficult. ... By 
promoting the overthrow of the monarchy, the Allied and Associated Powers helped to 
destroy the political form that was most suited to the genius of the German people. A 
constitutional monarchy, with the color and ceremonial that are as dear to the Germans 
as to the English, would have given the German State a certain majesty and fascination 
that was denied to the Republic, largely by reason of the complete aridity of the 
Marxian Myth (dialectical materialism does not lend itself to picturesquely, symbolical 
representation). . . . The solution for Germany's internal dissentions might have been 
found in a popular monarchy, a Volkskaisertum. Besides, as we shall see later on, the 
monarchic principle was conducive to decentralization and favorable to that federal 
spirit which has added such variety, richness, and freedom to German life. The monarchy 
contained the menace of reaction, but no reaction and no despotism under a restored 
monarch would have been as tyrannical as the dictatorship established by the National 
Socialist revolution of 1933." — F. A. Voigt, Unto Caesar. 

When the National Socialist danger increased beyond proportion in 1931 and 1932, 
Dr. Heinrich Briining himself thought about winning the Left and the Conservatives 
(who were unfortunately under the leadership of an uncapable industrialist — Dr. Hugen- 
berg) to forestall their victory by a monarchical restoration. The Left with the exception 
of the Nazis and Communists was quite willing to follow him, but Hindenburg, the 
great Cunctator hesitated. An excellent account of these intrigues and negotiations can be 
found in J. Wheeler-Bennett's Hindenburg, the Wooden Titan, London, 1936, pp. 339, 
353-368. 

27« "j n a re public and in a parliamentary monarchy on English lines, it is almost 
impossible for any outstanding genius to seize the reigns of government, for the 
mediocrity of the people from whom power has to be derived will always bar his way." 
— Guglielmo Ferrero, Peace and War, 1933. 

27711 Mr. Walter Lippmann contests in his Good Society the statement of Mr. Lewis 
Mumford that "as industry advances in mechanization a greater weight of political 
authority must develop outside than was necessary in the past" (Technics and Civiliza- 
tion). Unfortunately we cannot share Mr. Lippmann's optimism. He is convinced that 
the changes in techniques are so rapid that a rigid control and planning are out of place. 
The reply is that the control must be as flexible as its object. The difficulty is to have a 
well-adapted economical control without an increase in political control and a further 
destruction of civil liberties. This will not be altogether easy to achieve yet we gain a 
better perspective of our task if we regard industrial development as an "evil" which 
has to be policed. 

277b Here, so many Anglo-Saxons, make a basic mistake in judgment. It must be 
borne in mind that the plan for peace and the war effort are intrinsically interconnected. 
It depends upon the peace proposals (of the United Nations not yet made) how long 



APPENDIX I 375 

the Axis resistance is going to last. Professor Harold Laski of the London School of 
Economics thinks that the European Continent will only rise if it sees that England 
and America go sincerely "left," i.e., that private capitalism be supplanted by state 
capitalism. (See his letter to the New York Times, Sept. 30, 1942.) Howard Smith, who 
has written an otherwise excellent book on Germany (Last Train from Berlin) believes 
the same nonsense. It is depressing that an American who has lived for years in Nazi 
Germany still believes that there is any enthusiasm left in Europe for State omnipotency. 
He argues that if England would have kept her promise to nationalize the Welsh mines, 
things would be different in Germany (!). The German public would become restless 
if the armament factories and the ammunition industry of the United States would be 
nationalized (!). This would be the way to revolutionize the masses (!) in the sign 
of Total Democracy, which should become the slogan. 

All that is a dangerous walking in circles. The Europeans inside and outside of 
Germany are fed up with State and Statism, with any manifestation of colossalism and 
Pan-ism, with private or state capitalism. If German workers hear that the Welsh 
mines have been nationalized they visualize merely a mining manager in uniform and 
police support instead of a mining manager in a business suit and a police "connection." 
Total nationalization is communism. One wonders whether there is really a group of 
professors in the London School of Economics which thinks that Dutch saboteurs die 
with the name of one of the Gollancz books on their lips, whether the Chetniks of 
General Mihajlovic make shrines with pictures of Miss Naomi Mitchison or of Mr. 
Stephen Spender. I can assure Mr. Smith and Professor Laski that Europeans are not 
going to die on barricades for 10 per cent increases in salary, for the aggravated evil 
of State capitalism, for birth control clinics, cheap gadgets or election campaigns. The 
only form of leftism which will be popular in Europe after the war is Anarchism, total 
liberty, not a spurious "Total Democracy" which is halfway to total communism. (Cf. 
"A Conservative's Reflections on the Future of Europe" by F. S. Campbell, Thought, 
September, 1942.) These proposals all stem from the same psychological source; the 
basically erroneous interpretation of Fascism and Nazism by Marxists and Crypto- 
Marxists deeming it to be a capitalistic, semimedieval aristocratic-clerical conspiracy by 
non-Marxists ochlocrats. All remedies proposed on the basis of this wrong diagnosis 
are bound to fail and are going to cost oceans of blood. (See also Professor Laski's 
article in the London Observer, July 5, 1942, p. 3.) 

278 "Then, after the destruction of the Roman Empire and the French Revolution, 
began the third great crisis of western civilization. The fundamental reason was the same 
for all three: in the case of Rome, the downfall of the imperial government; in that of 
the Revolution, the downfall of the French monarchy; and today, the downfall of the 
monarchic system in Europe during 1918 and 1919. The war which began on September 
1, 1939, was not born of a conflict of political interests between the great powers, as was 
the first World War; it was born, like all the wars of the French Revolution, of the 
intellectual, moral, and political disorder to which Europe after 1919 was subjected by 
the collapse of the monarchic system, by the universal cult of revolution, and by the 
phrenetic subversion of all the laws." — Guglielmo Ferrero, The Reconstruction of Europe 
(Talleyrand and the Congress of Vienna, 1814-1815), trans, by Theodore R. Jaeckel (New 
York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1941), pp. 347-348. 

279 "Contemporary Europe is dominated by two fears; fear of Germany, and fear of 
anarchy as a consequence of social revolution. As a logical consequence, Europe will 
return, as she always returned, to her traditional civilization, which is neither urban 
democratic nor dictatorial, but agricultural and hierarchical; neither theocratic nor 
atheist, but Christian, yet rendering to Caesar the things that are Caesar's." — Douglas 
Jerrold, Britain and Europe, 1900-1940 (London: Collins, 1941). 

280 Cf. Armand de Caulaincourt, With Napoleon in Russia, trans, and edited by 
George Libaire (New York: 193S), p. 391. 

281 As an illustration of an inhuman humanitarianism, here is a sampling of some of 
the "finest" passages from the City of Man (New York: The Viking Press, 1941), issued 
by Herbert Agar, Frank Aydelotte, G. A. Borgese, Hermann Broch, Van Wyck Brooks, 



376 APPENDIX I 

Ada L. Comstock, William Yandell Elliott, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Christian Gauss, 
Oscar Jaszi, Alvin Johnson, Hans Kohn, Thomas Mann, Lewis Mumford, William Allan 
Neilson, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Gaetano Salvemini. 

"Democracy is nothing more and nothing less than humanism in theocracy and rational 
theocracy in universal humanism" (p. 33). 

"Democracy teaches that everything must be within humanity, nothing against 
humanity, nothing outside humanity" (p. 34). 

"But the fundamental principle is that the democratic concept of freedom can never 
include the freedom to destroy democracy and freedom. . . . This is — in an interpretation 
suited to the modern mind — the spirit which Christ called the Holy Ghost" (pp. 34- 
35). 

"The Protestant insurrection overrode all obstacles to the direct communication of the 
individual with God, thus fundamentally asserting the freedom of man's spirit" (p. 37) 
— (within the framework of predestination . . .). 

"Jesus, highest of Jewish prophets" (p. 40). 

"Democracy, in the catholicity of its language, interprets and justifies the separate 
creeds as its own vernaculars." 

"It follows then, that none of these vernaculars, however venerable and lovable, and 
whatever their right to citizenship, can take the place of the universal language which 
expresses the common belief of man. The latter explains and annexes all dogmas as 
symbols; the churches, in the fetters of literalism, anathemize as heresy and error the 
symbolical meaning that is the dogma's innermost truth" (p. 45). 

"A constitutional reform of democracy cannot be founded but on the spirit of a new 
religion" (p. 80). 

"An inquiry into the religious heritage of the western world should try to discover 
which of its elements are more apt to co-operate with the democratic community and 
consequently more deserving of protection and help by it, and whether other elements, 
conversely, are by nature and content so committed to the support of Fascist and other 
autocratic philosophies and intrinsically so inimical to democracy, or at least so ambigu- 
ous, as to become the source of additional danger in the hour of peril" (pp. 81-82). 

"Colleges and universities have even developed, almost spontaneously, in their chapel 
services and exercises a provisional model for an unsectarian liturgy — virtually ade- 
quate to a new religion outside the literal fences of each separate faith and embracing 
the spiritual substance of all" (p. 85). 

Walter Farrell, O.P., summed this book up in his extensive review in the Thomist 
(October, 1941) with the following phrase: "This book represents one of the earliest and 
most concrete conquests of Hitlerism in America." 

282 "A further reason (for the disastrous results of the modern treaties) — of which 
the full effects are seen for the first time in history in the Treaty of Versailles — was the 
purely democratic organisation of the more prominent victorious States. In the earlier 
and more absolutistic world that had been responsible for the great peace settlements of 
the past few centuries, monarchs, and ministers, who often saw further than the public 
opinion of their time, could take account of future possibilities, and, out of regard for 
political considerations, place a check on any immoderate demands. The terrible suffering 
which a modern war of long duration inflicts on the population, the exhausting sacrifices 
for which it calls, makes it imperiously necessary to inflame the nation to a white heat 
of fury so that it may hold out. All the arts of the subtlest propaganda were for the 
first time, in this war, directed to the achievement of that end. When the end came, it 
was obvious that the terrible momentum of an enraged public opinion could not be 
switched off by the twist of a lever. Much, therefore, that figures in the treaty of peace 
was inserted against the better judgment of the leading statesmen, to satisfy an excited 
public." — Richard von Kuhlmann, Thoughts on Germany, trans, by Eric Sutton (New 
York: Macmillan), 1932, pp. 89-90. 

283 Compare the attitude of the Allies at the end of World War I with the words of 
Frederic William III, addressing the Mayor of Berlin on the day of the victorious return 
of the troops in 1814: "The reception-festivities are exquisitely arranged and I honour 
them as expressions of good intention; but they are too pompous. I am displeased with 



APPENDIX I 377 

the accumulation of trophies, canons, and banners in front of the armory and directly 
opposite my lodgings. One does not have to and indeed one must never jeer at the 
vanquished enemy. That is despicable boasting and don't let us continue in our good 
luck the arrogance which brought us misery. It is against all manners to hurt the feel- 
ings of peoples with whom one has just concluded a peace, by frivolously exhibiting 
cannons and banners. . . . The magnificent victory-columns, the showy trophies in the 
windows of the arsenal must be removed, tomorrow's feast shall be one of Christian 
gratitude and humbleness before God. It is He who has done great things for Prussia; 
to Him alone all the honor is due." — Quoted by Fr. Eylert, Charokterziige und Histo- 
rische Fragmente aus dem Leben des Konigs von Preussen, Friedrich WUheltn III," 
Magdeburg, 1846, Verlag der Heinrichshofen'schen Buchhandlung. 

284 Godoy, the much maligned minister of Charles IV, said 120 years ago: "Yo soy uno 
de los pocos hombres de Europa que, a traves de vicisitudes tan violentes y frecuentes 
como han sufrido los gobiernos y los naciones, no han prestado mas que un juramento, 
uno solo: el que hice a mi rey y he mantenido hasta su muerte y despues de ella." How 
many officials in central Europe can show today a similar record? The decay of morality 
after a century of materialistic tradition in Europe is best characterized by the exclama- 
tions of an Austrian National Socialist leader during the Schuschnigg-regime which im- 
posed a special oath of allegiance upon the government officials. He said: "Na gut, so 
schwor'n mer halt a bisserl!" (O.K., then let's have a little oath giving!) Neither can I 
forget a German gentleman who emphasized his promise by the remark: "I give you my 
pre-war word of honor" (Vorkriegsehrenwort) . 

Further reference material: 
On the origins of World War I and II: 

Professor Sidney Fay, in Events, Vol. 6, No. 34, October, 1939, p. 241. 



Ill 

Odds and Ends 

285 Etatisme (statism) first of all manifests itself in a scholarly form, in the establish- 
ment of gratuitous and obligatory education with the aim of the liberation of the 
individual; next it appears in the social form, in measures destined to protect health and 
to shelter it from the risques of life: insurances against accidents, illness, old age, in- 
validity, and protection of survivors. Finally it exerts itself in the economic field through 
the creation of a national bank, equipped with the monopoly on issues. — Louis Rougier, 
Les Mystiques Economiques, 1938. 

286 Cf . Louis Rougier, Les Mystique Economiques, 1938. 

287 "And that race which has once lost the seed of aristocracy can never again recover 
it. For that seed is produced only in the garden of God, and when God purposes the 
destruction of a nation He destroys its Lords, and does not renew the sacred stock. Thus 
the nation deprived of leaders may not progress. It cannot even stay where it is, but 
must sink back to the marsh and the forest whence it has painfully and under guidance 
emerged." — A. Carthill. 

288 Cf. Wilhelm Hasbach, Die Moderne Demokratie, Jena, 1921, p. 200. See also Orestes 
Brownson's judgment on this subject quoted by Doran Whalen Granite for God's House 
(New York: Sheed and Ward, 1941), p. 161. 

289 "As opposed to the ancient authoritarian state (Obrigkeitsstaat) however, the people 
are not despised, but highly honored in the new Fiihrerstaat . If I were the 'People' I 
should protest that I prefer contempt and disregard to having my will absorbed and my 
feelings prescribed for me. I would rather be despised as a social inferior than be robbed 
of my ego as an infra-personal being." — Aurel Kolnai, The War Against the West. 

290 "The typical leader by no means influences the masses in one direction, he finds the 
undercurrent and is himself a possessed among the possessed. The typical mass-leader is 
not a 'demagogue,' he does not consciously and with a cool brain direct the masses in 



378 APPENDIX I 

one way, he most of all is gripped by the ecstasy of mass-experience, he is himself among 
the most unconscious of all." — Theodor Geiger, Die Masse und Ihre Action. 

281 The ideal monarch is certainly not an aristocrat. This is the deeper reason why, for 
instance, the laws of the House of Habsburg do not consider ladies of even the oldest 
aristocratic families as fit to be the wives of future emperors. The humiliating attitude 
of Francis Joseph toward his nephew Francis Ferdinand who married the Countess 
Chotek is explainable by the tendency to keep the dynasty aloof from any class connec- 
tion. It is truly essential for the sake of the very functions of the Christian monarchical 
system in Europe that rulers have: (a) international connections and (6) no class 
affiliations. 

292 ". . . He is the petit bourgeois, the man of bourgeois liberalism. How from our 
point of view is he to be characterized? He is seen to be the pharisaic and decadent 
product born of the spirit of Puritanism or Jansenism and that of rationalism. He pre- 
fers juridical fictions to love (as Sombart says, he is not 'erotic') ; and he prefers psy- 
chological figments to being (which is why one can say that he has no ontological 
being)." — Jacques Maritain, L'Humanisme integral (True Humanism). 

293 Qf Tij e demoniacal representation of Hitler as Oberfb'rster in Ernst Jiinger's 
courageous symbolical tale Auf den Marmorklippen (Hamburg, 1939). 

294 Cf . Aristotle, Politics, III, vi. 

296 «i n tne sphere of economics, covering nine-tenths of man's daily life, the test of 
every activity, increasingly came to be not 'Is it just?' but 'Does it pay?' There was 
only one check on that rule — the human conscience. With the gradual concentration of 
business in the hands of limited liability companies, even that check was removed. A 
limited liability company has no conscience. A priesthood of figures cannot consider 
claims of morality and justice that conflict with its mathematical formulas: it must live 
by its own rules. Man, who had once tried to model his life on the divine, came to take 
his orders from the lender of money and the chartered accountant acting in their purely 
professional capacity. That has been the story of the last century of civilization. The age 
of enlightened selfishness begot plutocracy, and plutocracy begot the monstrous material- 
istic and pagan tyrannies we are now fighting to destroy. It was England that first un- 
consciously led the world in this morass. It is England — wisest and gentlest of the 
nations — that has now to discover the way out." — Arthur Bryant, Pageant of England 
1840-1940 (New York and London: Harper and Bros., 1941), pp. 323, 324. 

286 Cf. J. H. Wood, Democracy and the Will to Power, p. 221. 

Further reading material: 
On "democracy's" hopeless antitotalitarianism : 

Georges Bernanos, Lettre aux Anglais, Rio de Janeiro, 1942, specially, pp. 234, 299- 

300. On Europe's anti-bourgeois character, pp. 210 ff. 
On the "democratic" persecution of the Catholic Church: 

Ronald Knox, Nazi and Nazarene, London, 1940, p. 7. 
On the factual background of totalitarianism (1) communications and (2) "democra- 
tization of the masses": 

Karl Mannheim, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction, New York, 1940, 

p. 108. 
A conservative criticism of National Socialism: 

Hermann Rauschning, Make and Break With the Nazis, London, 1941. 
On the prospects of "democracy" in the United States: 

A letter from Lord Macauley to Henry S. Randall, Esq., dated Kensington, London, 

May 23, 18S7. 
On the "democratic" aspects of totalitarian "leaders": 

Sigmund Neumann, Permanent Revolution, New York, 1942, pp. 3-4, 45. 



APPENDIX II 

THE TWOFOLD ASPECT OF MAN 




/ j | DIVERSITY | 



i 
i 
i / 

! | 

I 



) ^ROMANTIC SENT.] 






SOUL 
(psyche) 



BODY 

(PHYSIS) 
1 o 



HERD INSTINCT>>k 

— i y \\ 



CULTURE 



INTELLIGENCE 



INSTINCT 



»-■"%_ 



X X ,'r 



V 



i 



CIVILIZATION 



\ \ ui supra- 

\ \ N<4 NATURAL 



I IMMATERIAL 
I k- 



THE 
NATURAL 
MATERIAL 



■K 



./ 



* LI6ERTY 



X 



LAND 



RACE 



*^yfe£_ 



BLOOD 7? ' /I 
r .' i 
I 
I 



r 



EQUALITY 



FREEDOM 

OF 

WILL 



_„ DETER- / 

, MINATION, '' 
[DETERMINISMJ I 



T 



r 



APPENDIX III 

CHART OF "MODERN CIVILIZATION' 




APPENDIX III 

A. I entative I actuation or rierdist Civilization ana Culture 

This is not a pedigree in the ordinary sense of the word, but rather a 
tabulation of different cultural and political items which influenced the 
European and American life during the past 100 years. The older, tradi- 
tional values have been purposely excluded and the reader is invited to 
make a parallel tabulation with the opposite terms (supranationalism for 
nationalism, dualism for monism, etc.). There are naturally a series of 
items which do not have a term of contrary meaning. (For instance, 
"Luther" or "Hegelianism.") 

There are about 72 items in this table. Most of these are connected with 
a large number of the other items. There are only a few connecting lines 
drawn and the reader is encouraged to draw further connections. He will 
probably have to give up not because his (or her) ingenuity comes to a 
standstill and no new combinations will be detected, but because the sheet 
will be covered by such a thick net of lines that no new ones can be 
traced without resulting in total confusion. Our modern civilization and 
culture is actually a closely interwoven fabric ; phenomena like democra- 
tism, communism, or national socialism are not ideologies "hanging in 
the air" but popular philosophies supported by the most important and 
poignant aspects of our present civilization and culture. Walt Whitman, 
Lenin, and Hitler were not bombinantes in vacuo. Catholicism has there- 
fore to reject modern civilization almost in its totality. It is indeed diffi- 
cult to see how Catholicism would live in harmony with the items listed 
on this tabulation except as a survival in the spirit of resignation or as 
an energetic negation fired by the enthusiasm of a revolutionary force. 
Quod erat demonstrandum. The Communists sing : "Let us make a clean 
slate of the past," but they never meant honestly to break with the (im- 
mediate) past. The Catholic Church has no other alternative but to 
negate the Great Negation — our Modern Civilization. 



APPENDIX IV A 



A CATHOLIC GERMANY AND THE 
NATIONAL SOCIALIST PARTY 

(by Wahlkreise.) 




ANNEX EA 
£lectoral districts showinq 
^National-Socialist votes 
exceedinq 40%. 

July 1932 

Catholics 
50% and over. 



This map shows the election of July, 1932, as well as the areas inhabited pre- 
dominantly by Catholics. It shows to the great sorrow of the economical de- 
terminist that there is a very concrete connection between political views and 
religion. A more elaborate map (showing the returns of the individual Kreise) 
would have demonstrated the fact that there is an even conformity between 
National Socialism and Protestantism (Lutheranism as well as Calvinism). The 
reader will now probably appreciate the fateful mistake in Wilson's attitude 
toward the Anschluss which in all probability would have prevented the National 

Socialists' rise to power. 



APPENDIX IV B 

CATHOLICS IN EAST PRUSSIA AND 
NATIONAL SOCIALISM 




I0-30& 



Elections July 31, 1932, by "Kreise." (National Socialist votes.) 




60-1002 



Catholics in Eastern Prussia (census of 1933). 

The whole southern region of Eastern Prussia is Polish in language but 
Lutheran in religion. These Mazurs, as it can be seen on the map, voted 
overwhelmingly for the Nazis, while the German Ermelanders (Varmians) 
who are Catholics voted against them. Religion, not "race" is a paramount 
factor in political and ideological matters. 



APPENDIX V 

THE TREATY OF BREST LITOVSK 



/ // / ^/\ AUSTRIA 1914 




ANNEX Y. 



GERMANY 1914 



TERRITORY LOST 8Y RUSSIA 
IN BREST-LITOVSK 

TERR/TORY CEDED 3f RUSSIA 
IN AUGUST 19/8 



TERRITORY CEDBDBK 
RUSSIA IN 1920 S- 1921 



=== BORDERS OF POLAND 

PROPOSED BY LORD CURZON 



POLAND BEFORE THE FIRST 
PARTITION ( eh sterh bsiioer) 



UKRAINE 



The Ukraine which has never been reincorporated into Russia proper has 
been left out. Neither were the borders between Russia (RSFSR) and 
the national Ukraine ever fixed. After the conquest of the Communists 
the Soviet Ukraine (USSR) became part of the Soviet Union (SSSR) 
but never of Russia (RSFSR). 



INDEX 

(Names and Subjects) 

Constantly recurring subjects such as ochlocracy, herdism, "democracy," 

identitarian, diversitarian are omitted. Only authors and persons of 

Appendix I are included. 



Abd el Krim, 88 

Abstract (represented by male), 97 

Acomb, Evelyn M., 129 n. 

Action, Lord, 274, 373 

Adair, D., 7 

Adamites, 169 n. 

Adams, James Truslow, 4 

Adams, John, 3, 4, 6, 366, 374 

Adams, John Quincy, 7 

Adams, Mildred, trans., 334, 337, 356 

Adler, Dr. Mortimer, 29, 76 n., 254 n„ 265, 326, 

327, 360, 366 
Adler, Max. , 326 
Advertising, 56, 56 n. 
Aehrenthal, Count, 143 
Afghanistan, 278 
Aino (Ainu), 237 n. 
Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen), 165, 305 
Ajaccio, 121 
Albania, 278 

Albert of Coburg-Gotha, 106 
Albert I of Belgium, 106 
Albertus Magnus, St., 169, 209 
Albigenses, 172 n. 
Aleksandrov, Todor, 88 
Alexander I of Russia, 106 
Alexander II of Russia, 106 
Allers, Dr. Rudolf, 20, 334 
Alliance, Holy, 222, 222 n. 
Allies (Werld War I), 140, 144 
Alphons XIII, 66 

Alsace, 51 (Protestant influences), 303 
Alsace-Lorraine, 141, 154, 164 
Amalekites, 236 
Amaterasu, Sun Goddess, 153 
Ambition, 233-234; (social in U.S.), 267 n. 
America (see also United States), 60 
"Americanization" of immigrants, 230 
Amerikanismus (as viewed by Europeans), 202 
Amerongen, 156 
Amiguet, Philippe, 346 
Ammon, Otto, 336 

Anarchism and Anarchists, 26 n., 192, 266 
Anderson, Eugene N., 152 n. 
Anglo-Catholicism (in U.S.), 266 
Anglo-French Secret Naval Alliance, 144 n. 
Anthony, Susan B., 236 
Anthropocentrism, 20, 21, 22, 306, 318 
Antialcoholic legislation, 82 n. 
Antiaristocratic agitation (in England), 218 



Antichrist, 27 

"Anticlericalism," 213 

Anti-Judaism, 187, 187 n., 239 

Ants, 136 

Apennines, 128 

Araktcheyev, A. A., 45 

Aristocracy of Birth, 210, 214; (as "clercs"), 
216, 220, 228; antimonarchical : 46-^19, 228 n.; 
of Hungary, 47-48; of America, 48-49, 49 n.; 
of England, 47, 217 ff., 222; of Poland, 47, 48; 
of Russia, 47; of Spain, 47; in cities, 50-51; 
in courts, 50-51, 217; and moneyed class, 
217-218 

Aristocracy (as form of government), 223 

Aristocracy (natural, aristoi), 4, 22, 76, 87 n., 
246; (Catholic intellectual), 263, 265; (in the 
U.S.), 311 

Aristotle, 3, 15, 51, 105, 327, 371, 378 

Armagnacs, 215 

Armenian Rite, 70 

arms, freedom of bearing, 228 n. 

army (U.S.), 249 

Arndt, Ernst Moritz, 353 

arts, liberal, 254 

Asphaltkultur, 184, 188 

Assassins (sect), 307 

Assisi, 272 

Astrid, Queen, 338 

Atatiirk (Mustapha Kemal Ghazi), 36, 127 n. 

Athenians, 249; Athens, 31 

Atkinson, C, trans., 333 

Atlantic Charter, 9, 304, 305 

Atwood Harry F., 2 

Auden W. H., 281 

Augustine, St., 26, 306 

Australia, aborigines of, 237 n. 

Austria, 8, 126, 127 n. 153, 160 n. 194 n; Na- 
tional-Socialists in, 200, 209-210, 211; Socialists 
in 9, 211; after this war, 297-298. Anschluss 
of, 131, 141, 203, 220 n., 228 n., 239, 347, 
363 

Austria-Hungary, 53, 138, 139, 140, 142, 143, 
143 n., 144 n., 145, 150 n., 168, 168 n„ 200, 
213, 297; Emperors of, 129; breaking up of, 
131, 140; and Church, 157, 159 n., 160 n., 222 

Austrians, under Italian rule, 141 n.; of German 
tongue, 142; martial character, 180; share in 
German culture, 191, 212 

autocracy, 1 1 

"average" vs. "typical," 231-232 



385 



386 



INDEX 



average man, 128 
Axis, the, 220 n., 222 
Ayer, William, 370 

Baal, 208 

Babbitt, Irving, 18, 21, 324, 333, 335, 359 

Babylon, craftsmen of, 268 

"Backwardness" (of Catholic countries), 52-53 

Baden, 90, 179, 182 

Baden-Baden, 178 

Bagdad, road to, 156 

Baikal, Lake, 126 

Bailey, Dr. William L., 370 

Bainville, Jacques, 105, 348 

Bakunin M., 79, 343 

Balabanov, Angelika, 94 

Baldwin, Stanley, 220 

Balfour, Lord, 357 

Balkans, 233; Balkan War (second), 150 n. 

ballet, 59 

Ballhausplatz, 143 

Ballin, Albert, 183 

Baltic countries, 52, 223 n; gentry of 196 

Baltimore, 273 

Bandini, Gino, 350 

Baroja, Pio, 343 

Baroque (style), 140, 172 

Barr, Stringfellow, 12 n. 

Barrie, Sir James, 148 

Basle, 31 

Basque privileges, 47 

Bat'a, Jan (industrialist), 230 

Bate, J. P., LL.D., trans., 347 

Batthyany, Louis Count, 48 

Baudelaire, Charles, 181 

Bavaria (and) Bavarians, 51, 57, 172 n., 179, 
182, 198, 264 

Baxter, Richard Rev., 327, 371 

Beard, Charles A., and Mary R., 7 n. 

Beardsley, Aubrey, 79 

Bebel, 54 

bees, 136 

Beethoven, Ludwig van, 204 

Beggar's Opera (Dreigroschenoper), 183 

Behaviorism, 97 

Belcher, Henry, 368 

Belfast, 53 

Belgium, 57, 138; neutrality of, 143 n., 144 n„ 
149 n. 

Belgrade, 174 

Bellamy, 36 

Bellarmine, St. Robert, 28, 112, 227, 262, 263, 
338, 365 

Belloc, Hilaire, 172 n., 363 

Benda, Julien, 61, 220 

Benedict XV, Pope, 146, 147 n. 

Benes, Dr. Edward, 141, 158, 200, 349 

Bennet, W. S., 1 n. 

Bentham, Jeremiah, 190, 205 n., 290, 317 

Berdyaev (Berdiaeff) Nicholas, 104, 324, 327, 
328, 329, 331, 332 

Bergson, Henri, 105 

Berlin, 46, 60, 127, 142, 144, 146, 187, 192, 229; 
revolts in, 90, 130; socialism of, 222; acclaims 
Napoleon, 216; French background, 174; con- 
gress of, 109 

Bern, 31 

Bernanos, Georges, 32, 378 

Bernhart, Josef, 66 

Bessarabia, 149, 150, 223 n. 

Bethlen, Count Istvan, 127 n., 158 

Beuron, 272 

bibliolatry, 55 



Btgelow, Poultney, 345 

Billington, Ray Allen, 364 

biological differentiation, 42 

Birnbaum, Uriel, 187 n. 

"Birth of Nation" (film), 239 n. 

Bismarck, Otto Prince, 131, 143, 153, 180, 181, 

241 
Black Front, 192 
Black Hills, 192 

Blood and Soil, see; Blut una 1 Boden 
blood feud, 126 
Bloy, Leon, 211 
Bliicher, Leberecht von, 177 
blue laws, 82 n. 
Bluher, Hans, 20 f. 
Blut und Boden, 195-197 
Boccaccio, 258 
Bogicevic, Milos, 143 
Bogumil, 49 n. 
Bohemia, 141, 154, 158, 165, 171, 191; Germans 

of, 200 
Bohmerwald, Germans of, 169 n. 
Bolivia, 134 
Bologna, 170 

Bonald, L. G. A. de., 124, 330 
Bonnard, Abel, 110, 337 
Bonsels, Waldemar, 136 
Borders (national-ethnic), 154, 157 n. 
Bormann, Martin, 205 n., 361 
Borsodi, Ralph, 326 

Bossuet, Jacques Benigne, 110, 308, 342 
Boston (Tea Party), 155; (City), 232, 273; 

(Irish of), 266 
Botticelli, Sandro, 16 
Boucher, Colonel Arthur, 350 
Boulangisme, 144 n. 
Bourbons, 119, 139, 147 n., 282, 300 (Connetable 

Charles de, 133) 
bourgeois, 56, 57, 62, 63, 68-71; and bolshevism, 

279-281 
bourgeoisie, 69, 123 
Bourne, Geoffrey, 312 n. 
boyars, 234 

Brabant, Duchess of, 209 n. 
Brandenburg, Electorate of, 173, 175 
Brant, Irving, 24 n. 
breech-loader, 179 
Brehm, Bruno, 106 
Brentano, Clement, 124, 141 n. 
Breslau, 184 
Brest-Litovsk, Treaty of, 148, 149, 149 n., 150, 

213 
Briand, Aristide, 54 
Briefs, Gotz, 172 
Brighton, 16 

British army, Catholics in, 34 
British Commonwealth of Nations, 225 
Brockdorff-Rantzau, Count Ulric, 154 
Brogan, D. W., 176 n., 352 
Brookings Institution, 34 
Brooklyn, 271 
Brown, S. Rev., 369 
Brownson, Orestes, 371, 377 
Bruhl, Heinrich Count, 45 
Briining, Dr. Heinrich, 193 n., 374 
brutality, 201 n. 
Bryant, Arthur, 332, 345, 378 
Bryce, James, 333, 337 

Bucharest (and Treaty of), 148, 149-150, 174 
BUchner, 281 
Buckingham Palace, 297 
Budapest, 90, 129, 160 
Buddhism, 37, 114 



INDEX 



387 



Biirckel (Gauleiter), 210 

Bukovina, 141, 158 n. 

Bulgaria, 150, 150 n., 156 n„ 222, 223 n., 278, 

303 
Burckhardt, Jacob, 360, 362 
bureaucracy, 81, 193, 243, 249, 249 n., 250, 302 

(see also: officialdom) 
Buren, van, 7 

Burke, Edmund, 274, 362, 363 
Burleigh, Lord, 91 
Burnham, James, 311, 369 
Burns, E. M., 5 
Burschofsky, Ferdinand, 200 
Busch, Moritz, 344 
Butler, Nicholas Murray, 3 
Butler, Rohan d'O, 361 
Byas, Hugh, 109 n. 
Byron, G. G. N., 79 
Byzantium, 114, 221 



C.G.T., 90 

C.I.O., 135 n. 

Caballero, Ernesto Ximenez, 367 

Cabanes and Nass (coauthors), 55 n. 

Caesaropapism, 114 

Calais, 225 

Calderon de la Barca, 281 

Caldwell, Erskine, 249 n. 

Calhoun, J. J., 6, 33, 342 

California, 266 

Calvin John (Jehan Cauvin), 22, 32, 41, 51, 52, 

52 n., 132, 153, 170, 281 n„ 318, 338 
Calvinism, Calvinists, 32, 52, 174, 213, 218, 236 
Campbell, F. S„ 375 
Campion, Edmund, Blessed, 211 
Canaanites, 208 
Canada, 223 n., 227 
Canning, George, 116 
Canterbury, 305 
Cape Cod, 211 n. 
Capitalism, State, 23, 134, 282 (see also: 

Socialism) 
Capito, Wolfgang, 285 n. 
Carlists, Carlist Wars, 47, 282 
Carnegie, Andrew, 250 
Carolingians (Carlovingians) , 233 
Carpathians, 140, 146, 150 
Carrel, Alexis, 324 

Carroll, Charles (of Carrollton), 330 
Carthill, A., 310, 311, 377 
Casas, Bishop Bartolome' de las, 236 
Catalonia, 26, 80 n., 90 
categories, thinking in, 89 
Catherine II, 93 
Catherine of Siena, St., 93 

Catholic Church, 53-54, 39 n„ 238, 258-267, 272 
Catholic Digest, 12 n. 
Catholic Rural Life Conference, 74 n. 
Catholicism, 23, 28-30, 90, 91 
Catholics, 139 n., 152 n., 191, 193 n., 259, 260, 

261 
Caulaincourt, Armand de, 375 
"Caustic," Dr. Christoph, 4 
Cauvin, Jehan, see John Calvin 
Cavour, Count C. B., 131 
Cayenne, 201 n. 
Cecil, Algernon, 349, 350 
Cecils (brothers) , 45 
Center Party (of Germany), 56 n„ 193, 193 n., 

264 
Central Europe, 27, 57, 156, 157 n., 160 n., 244, 

297 fl., 305 



Centralism, 22, 48 n. 

Central Powers (World War I), 142, 144, 148 

Cervantes, Miguel, 281 

Cezanne, Paul. 181 

Chamberlain, Sir Austin, 220 n. 

Chamberlain, Houston Stewart, 181, 213, 236 

Chamberlin, W. H., 189, 340, 342 

Chambre des D6put£s, 237 

Chamier, J. Daniel, 106 n., 345 

Champ de Mars, 32 

Channing, 26 

Chardonne, Jacques, 93 

Charlemagne, 107, 164 

Charles I (of Austria), 107, 139 n., 147, 156 

Charles V "of Europe," 107, 115, 133. 140, 153, 

170, 298 
Charles, Archduke of Austria, 177 
Chateaubriand, F. R., 121, 124 
Chattanooga, 249 
Cheka, 209 

Chelm, District of (Chelm), 148, 150 n. 
Chetnitzl, 128 n. 
Chicago, 232, 271, 317 
Child Labor Amendment Act, 204 n. 
Children (as State property), 285, 285 n. 
Chile, 278 

China, Chinese, 8, 138, 182, 236 
Chinese Official, Letters from a. 369 
Chinese Society, 40 
Chotek, Countess Sophie, 378 
Christendom, 58, 164, 305 
Christian Brothers. 263 
Christianity (of England), 224-225 
Christine, Queen of Sweden, 94 
Church (see also Catholic Church), 72-73, 113, 

135, 135 n., 138, 181, 207 n., 229 
Church, Eastern, 90, 114, 158 
Church, Episcopal (Anglican), 229 
Church and State, Separation of, 259-260 
Churchill, Winston, 219, 232 
Cihula, Aloysius, 200 
Ciller, A., 200 n. 
Cincinnati, 68 
Cinema (as art), 59 
Cinovniki, 278 

cities (structural character), 81 
citizenship, 112 n. 
City of Man, 27, 306, 375-376 
civil liberties, 183 n., 301 
civil service, 194 

civilization, 36-37, 59, 68, 231, 262 
Clairveaux, 272 
clarity, Latin, 169, 170 
Clark, Gideon, 334, 362, 364 
class, 120 n„ 193 
Claudel, Paul, 32 

Clemenceau, Georges, 54, 147, 152 
"clercs," 61, 66 
"clericalism," 262 
Cohn, Prince-Archbishop. 187 
Colbert, Jean B., 45 
Collectivism, 59, 134 
Cologne, 299 
Colonel Blimp, 223, 224 
Colonies (Germany's loss of), 155 
Colorado, River, 236 
Colorado, State, 251 
Columbus, Christopher, 239 
Combes, Emile, 54, 190 
comfort, 36-37 
comics, 36 n. 
Commager, H. S., 346 



388 



INDEX 



Common Man, Age of, 244 n. 

commonness, 195-196, 195 n. 

Commons, House of, 219 

Communism, 26, 73, 91, 192, 258, 270 n., 277- 

286, 278 ff., 279, 283, 290 
Communist Party, 26 n., 134, 185 n., 194, 194 n. 
Communists, 219, 266, 272 
competitive society (and crime), 34, 35 
compromise, 42, 43 
concreteness (of the female sex), 97 
Conference on Science, Philosophy, and Religion, 

76 n., 254 n. 
Congress (U.S.), 192-193, 246-248, 249 
conscription (see also: levSe en masse), 135, 

135 n., 212, 272, 317, 340 
Conservative Party, 45 
Conservatives, Conservatism, 8, 100, 180 n., 185, 

185 n., 210n., 214, 355 
Constitution (U.S.), 1, 2, 5, 6, 246 
Constitution (Europe), 301 
converts (Catholic in Britain), 370 
convictions, people with, 210 
Copenhagen, 50, 188 
corporate state, 111 
Corsica, 144 n. 

Cortes, Donoso, 112 n., 326, 354, 373 
Corti, Conte Caesar, 198 n. 
Cotton, John, 226 

Coudenhove-Kalergi, Richard Count, 187 n. 
Counter Reformation, 140 
Cowles Virginia, 347 
Cram, Ralph Adams, 3, 74, 369 
creative activities, 64, 64 n., 86, 98 
Crete, 128 

Croatia, 156, 158, 223 n. 
Cromwell, Oliver, 121 
Crusoe, Robinson, 84 
Culbertson, Ely, 251 
Culture, Catholic, 191 n. 
Culture, 36-37, 59, 184, 231, 272 n., 284 
Cumming, E. E., 201 n. 
Cusa, Nicholas of, 351 
Czar (of Russia), 234 
Czechoslovakia, 131, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160 n., 

201, 220 n. 

Czechs, 166, 167, 169, 169 n., 172 n., 197, 199, 

202, 211 

Czernin, Count Ottokar, 149 
Czernowitz (Cernauti), 158 n. 

d'Aubigne, Theodore Agrippa, 346 

Dabney, Virginus, 367 

Dakotas, 240 

Dalmatia, 140, 179 

Dames des Halles, 235 

Damjanich, Janos, 48 

Danes, 211, 216 

Dante Alighieri, 338, 356 

Danzig, 154, 176 n. 

Darre, Walter, 207 n. 

Darwin, Charles, 136, 213, 236 

Dauphine, 17 

Davis, Dr. Katherine B., 323 

Dawson, Christopher, 264 n., 284 n., 331, 340, 

341, 356, 373 
Death, fear of, 23, 34 n., 75 n., 85 n., 99 
Death Dance (Totentanz), 33 
Deism, 59 

Delbriick, Hans, 358, 359, 362, 369 
Delos, J. T„ 361 
Democratism, 10 
demophily, 243 
Denmark, 93, 303, 313; (King of), 50 



i&tartcmtnts (in France), 119 

determinism, 22, 26, 133, 136 

Detroit, 37, 85, 271 

Deutsche Arbeilerpartei, 200-201 

Deutscher Tumverein, 131 

devaluation of artifacts, 86 

Dewey, John, 22, 42 n., 190, 308 

dialects, 128-130, 129 n. 

Dictators, dictatorships, 194, 195, 242, 307 

Diderot, 50 

Diesel, Eugen, 332, 334, 352, 373 

dignity, 26, 96, 97, 301 

Dilke, Sir Charles, 144 n. 

Dillard, Victor, S.J., 262 n., 370 

Disraeli, Benjamin (Lord Beaconsfield), 336, 339, 

345 
"Divine Rights" of kings, 28, 112 
Dobrudja, 150, 150 n. 
dogs, 167 n. 

Doherty, J. Hampden, 2 
Dollfuss, Engelbert, 127 n., 154, 196, 198 n. 
Dos Passos, John, 261 
Dostoyevski, F. M., 22, 25, 68, 94, 161, 204, 

209, 267, 324, 339, 362, 366 
Douglas, Lord Alfred, 20 n. 
Doumergue, Emile, 348 
Dover, 215 

Dr. Gallup's Institute for Public Opinion, 104 
dreamer, 44 n. 
dress, national, 127 n., 224 
Drieu la Rochelle, Pierre, 338 
Drtil, F., 154 n. 
Drucker, Peter, 291, 311 n. 
du Barry, Madame, 93 
Dublin, 53 
Dubois, 34 

Ducatillon, J. V., O.P., 361 
Duff-Cooper, Alfred, 216 
Dujardin, Edouard, 350 
Dumas Pere, Alexandre, 183 n. 
Diirer, Albrecht, 33, 164 
Dunan, Henri, 32 
Durant, Will, 261, 330 
Durnovo, M., 362 
Dutch, 166, 167 
dynamos, worship of, 62, 62 n. 
Dyrssen, Carl, 352, 361 

Earl, Homer, trans., 360 

Eccentrism (in Britain) , 79 n. 

Eckehardt, Meister, 169 

economics (necessity of relegation of), 243 n. 

Eddy-Baker, Mrs. Mary, 258 

Eden Act, 51 

Eden, Anthony, 220 n. 

Education, 66, 67 n., 76, 76 n., 77 n., 87, 214, 

223 n., 244, 252 n., 253-255, 259, 263 ff., 263 n. 

285 
Edward VI, 112 
Edward VII, 106, 142 
egalitarianism, 24, 50 
egocentrism and egoism, 20 
Ehrenburg, Ilya, 21 
Eisenmenger, Dr. Victor, 106 n. 
Elbe River, 176 

Electorate (of early U.S.), 228, 230 n. 
Elena, Queen of Spain, 119 
Eliot, Dr. Charles W., 350 
Eliot, T. S., 360, 371 
Elite, Catholic, 263 

Elizabeth, Empress of Austria-Hungary, 32 
Elizabeth, Queen of England, 93 



INDEX 



389 



Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 236, 325 

Empire, Holy Roman (First German Reich), 119, 

128, 142, 164 ff., 166, 210, 298, 300 
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 3, 156 
Engels, Friedrich, 185 n. 
England (Great Britain), 34, 52, 57, 60, 61, 78, 

82, 139 n., 144, 144 n., 145, 146, 151, 159, 

168, 171, 177, 179, 202, 209, 212, 214, 217 ff., 

219, 239, 249 n., 260, 269, 278, 303 
England, Church of (see: Episcopal, Anglican, 

Church) 
Enlightenment (iclaircissement) , 32 
Entente, Little, 159, 160 n. 
Environmentalism, 22, 89 n. 
Envy, 61 

Episcopal (Anglican) Church, 52, 266 
Equality (see also: egalitarianism) , 5, 6, 22, 23, 

24, 25, 26, 115-116, 224, 296 
Erbe, Dr. Helmut, 353 
Ermeland (ers) (Varmia), 172 n., 176 n. 
Escapism, 23 
Esdras, Prophet, 209 n. 
Estates (First, Second, Third), 46-49, 60, 210, 

217, 223 n. 
Estates (Fourth and Fifth), 315 
Esthonia, 148, 149, 150 
Eton, 219, 220 

Europe, 126, 128, 143, 152, 241, 247, 273, 297 ff. 
Evangelical Counsels, 283-284 
"Everyman" {Jedermann), 33 
Evolutionism, 136, 237 

Experts, 111, 194 n., 241, 243 n., 244, 244 n. 
Eylert, Fr., 377 



F.A.I., 30 
"Facticism," 



115 



Faguet, Emile, 340 

Fantasy, 267-270 

Farmers, 241 

Farrel, James T., 261, 271 

Farrell, Walter, O.P., 376 

Fascism, 111, 135, 197, 242, 266 n., 271-273 

Fascist Party, 194 n. 

Fascists, 214, 272 

Fawkes, Guy, 9 

Fay, Bernard, 47 n. 

Fay, Sidney, 143, 287 n., 345, 350, 377 

Fechner, Gustav, 281 

Federalism (in the European sense), 22, 48 n. 

Federalist, 3, 10, 12 

Federn, Dr. Paul, 337 

Fellner, Dr., burgomaster, 180 

Fen61on, Francois, 350 

Ferdinand I, H.R.E., 180 

Ferdinand II, H.R.E., 140, 298 

Ferdinand of Bulgaria, 106 

Ferrer, Antonio, 54 

Ferrero, Guglielmo, 123 n., 144 n., 212 n., 299 n., 

340, 341, 342, 349, 359, 374, 375 
Fichte, Z. H., 191 
Figner, Vera, 94 

Finland, 95, 148, 148 n., 149, 188, 306 
Fitch, Crawford, trans., 373 
Flexner, Abraham, 255 n. 
Florence, 48, 78 
Foch, F., 127 n. 
Foerster, F. Wilhelm, 302 n. 
Folly of the Cross, Holy, 19 
Folsom, Joseph Kirk, 367 
Fontane, Theodor, 174 
Football coaches, 255 n. 
Ford, Henry, 36 
Foreign Office, British, 150 



Foreigners, dislike of, 235-236 

Forel, Auguste, 344 

Forst de Battaglia, Otto, 176 n. 

Founding Fathers, 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 12, 228, 246, 247 

Four Freedoms, 9 

France, 31, 51, 53, 60, 138, 144, 144 n., 145, 

168, 172, 173, 177, 181, 189, 204 n., 207, 212, 

215-216, 233, 237, 253, 260 n., 278, 313 
France, Anatole, 35, 181, 346, 348, 371 
Franchise, general, 43-46; reform of, 247-248 
Francis of Assisi, St., 85, 135 n. 
Francis I, of France, 173 
Francis II (I), of Austria, 177 
Francis Ferdinand, Archduke, 106, 378 
Francis Joseph, Emperor, 60, 66, 107, 129 n., 139, 

139 n„ 140, 142, 154 n., 298, 300, 378 
Franco, Francisco, 88, 127 n., 304 
Frank, Waldo, 37 

Frankfurt a. Main, 165; diet of, 168 n., 179, 180 
Franklin, Benjamin, 60, 227 
Franks, 164 
Frantz, Constantin, 165, 175, 301, 342, 351, 354, 

359 
Frederick, "Empress," 106 
Frederick II, of Prussia, 107, 118, 140, 175, 

175 n., 176, 176 n., 212, 317, 353 
Frederick III (I), of Prussia, 175 
Frederick William, the Great Elector, 173, 174 n., 

175 
Frederick, William III, of Prussia, 177 
Frederick, William IV, of Prussia, 177 
Free Will (libertas arbilrii), 22, 24, 132, 136, 

281, 281 n., 285, 318 
French Canadians, 266 
French character, 215-216 
French ideas, in Germany, 186 
French Revolution, 22, 31, 32, 97, 116, 117, 119, 

121, 139, 145, 153, 165, 186, 196, 202, 209, 

212, 212 n., 213, 222, 304 
Freud, Dr. Sigmund, 318 
Fribourg, 31 

Friedrich, Kaspar David, 124 
Fueros (of Spain), 47 
Fuller, J. F. C, Major General, 345 
Fulop-Miller, Rene, 62 n., 323, 365 

Gabriel, Ralph Henry, 336 

Galicia (Austrian province), 141, 145, 179, 197 

Gallup Poll, 8 

Gardiner, Harold C, 370 

Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 131 

Garnett, Constance, trans., 366 

Garrett, Paul, 334 

Gasparin, Agenor de, 325 

Gauss, Christian, 327 

Gazetta Ladina, 330 

Geiger, Theodor, 378 

General Will, 133, 185 n., 237 

Geneva, 31-32, 51, 53 n., 153, 221, 281 n., 309 

Genghis Khan, 121 

Genoa, 48, 217 n. 

"Gentleman" (as human ideal), 72-73 

Geocentrism, 32 

Geopolitics, 190 

George III, 107 

Georgia (U.S.), 238 n. 

German Emperor, 182 

German Reich, First, see Empire, Holy Roman 

German Reich, Second, 139, 141, 142, 181 ff., 

182, 183, 206, 264 
German Reich, Third, 143, 189 ff., 201, 202, 206, 

213, 219, 288-292 

German-Russian Pact in 1939, 290, 290 n„ 291 



390 



INDEX 



German-Russian war in 1941-43, 277 n., 291 
Germans, 56, 154, 166-168, 168 n., 169, 182, 

190, 279, 303 
Germany and Germanies, 97, 128, 141, 153, 

159 n„ 163 B., 165, 213, 215, 216, 253, 298 
Gerry, 3 
Gestapo, 209 
Ghandi, Mahatma, 168 
Ghent, 165 

Ghetto, Catholic in U.S., 262, 262 n., 265 
Girondism, 304 

Gladstone, W. E., 53, 139, 197, 232, 327, 348 
Glasgow, 224 n. 
Gleichschaltung, 195 
Gneisenau, Neidhardt von, 177 
Gohbels, Dr. Joseph P., 190, 208, 209 
Gobineau, J. A. Comte de, 136, 213, 236 
Godoy, Manuel, Prince of Peace, 377 
Goethe, Joh. Wolfgang, 314, 352 
Gogarten, Friedrich, 361 
Gogol, Nicholas, 278 
Golden Bull (of Hungary), 47 
Golder, F. A., 362 
Gombos, Gyula, 158 
Gooch, G. P., 50, 143, 345 
Gordon, David, 323 
Gordon, Manya, 255 
Goring, Hermann, 204 
Gorki, Maxim (Pyeshkov), 79 
Government, 103, 111 n. 
Goya, Francisco de, 281 
Grabner, F., 49 n. 
Graham, Alan, Capt., 303 n. 
Grandeur (Grossartigkeit) , 37 
Grant, Madison, 213, 236 

Greece, 8, 31, 128, 144 n., 150 n., 228, 239, 278 
Greeks, 221 

"Green International," 80 
Gregory XVI, Pope, 27 
Grillparzer, Franz, 21, 332 
Grissons (Swiss canton), 80 n. 
Groethuysen, Bernard, 329, 344 
Grotius, Hugo, 45, 112 
Groton, 220 
Guardini, Romano, 169 
Guenoon, Rene, 330 
Guerard, Albert, Prof., 343, 350 
Guest, Edgar, 230 

Guillotin and Guillotine, 22, 116, 204 
Gumpert, Martin, 183, 187 n. 
Gurian, Waldemar, 372 
Gustavus, Adolphus, 174 n. 
Gutenberg, Johann, 55 
Gymnasium (German), 76, 97 
Gymnastic Leagues, 130, 130 n., 131 n., 254 
Gynaecocracy, 115 
Gynt, Peer, 267 



Habsburgs, 127 n., 139, 140, 156, 158, 160 n., 171, 

180, 191, 210, 222, 282, 298 
Hackett, Francis, 261 
Hadley, A. T., Prof., 325 
Haeckel, Ernst, 281 
Haecker, Theodor, 334 
Hagen von Tronje, 290 
Halevy, Daniel, 354 
Halifax, Lord, 225 
Hamburg (revolts), 90 
Hamilton, Alexander, 3, 4, 216, 227 
Hamilton, W. H„ 7 
Hampshire, 215 
Hanfstaengl, "Putzi," 236 



Hanover, house of, 57; King of, 132, 179 

Hanover (ians), 172 n., 180, 180 n. 

Hansa cities, 31 

"Happy end," 32 

Hardenberg, Karl prince, 177 

Harvey, Clare and L. A., 334 

Harwood, H. M., 216, 361 

Hasbach, W., 377 

Hauser, Ernest O., 342 

Haushofer, Dr. Karl, 190 

Havelaar, Just, 371 

Hayes, H. J. Carlton, 204, 342, 344, 354, 355 

Hazai, Baron Samuel, 187 

Health, worship of, 23 

Hebrew (language), 130 

Hegel, Georg, 182, 190 

Hegemann, Werner, 353, 357 

Heine, Heinrich, 204 

Heligoland, 303 

Hello, Ernest, 66, 323 

Hemingway, Ernest, 216 n., 227 n., 261 

Hengist and Horsa, 240 

Henri IV, of France, 47, 127 

Henrietta Maria, Queen of England, 119 

Henry VII, of England, 217 

Henry VIII, of England, 217 

Hermens, F. A., 348 

Hero (as human ideal), 72-73 

Herulians, 240 

Herzen, A. I., 79 

Hesse (Grandduke of H.-Nassau), 132, 179, 180 

Hierarchy, 22 

Hildegard of Bingen, St., 94, 169 

Hindenburg, Paul, 313 n., 374 

Hinduism, 114 

Hindukush, 126 

Hitler, Adolf, 24, 34, 36, 96 n„ 113, 141, 147, 
156, 159, 170, 171, 191, 196, 197 ff., 201 n., 
202 n., 219, 222, 236, 254 n., 306, 308, 314- 
315, 326, 347, 361, 378 

Hitierjugend, 203 

Hoare-Laval plan, 220, 220 n. 

Hobbes, Thomas, 191, 251 

Hoch, Karel, 200 

Hofer, Andreas, 88 

Hoffmann, E. T. A., 124 

Hoffmann, Genereal Max, 149 

Hohenlohe, family of, 250 

Hohenzollern, dynasty of, 173, 174, 177, 193 

Hohlbaum, Robert, 200 n. 

Hokinson, Helen, 97 

Holland, 34, 51, 52, 61 

Hollis, Christopher, 228, 228 n. 

Holstein-Gottorp, House of, 303 n. 

Homo oeconomicus (economic man), 60, 280, 
287, 289 

Homoeroticism, 20; in the 3rd Reich, 96 

Hook, Sidney, 360 

Hooton, E. A., 239 n. 

Horizontalism, horizontal order, 23, 93, 188, 134 

Horthy, Nicholas, Admiral and Regent of Hun- 
gary, 127, 158 

Horvath, Odon von, 205 

Howell, William Dean, 268 n„ 371 

Hroswitha of Gandersheim, 93 

Huch, Ricarda, 357 

Huddleston, Sisley, 350 

Hiigel, Baron Friedrich von, 66, 357 

Hugelmann, K. G., 349 

Hugenberg, Alfred, 185 n. 

Huguenots, 52, 172 n„ 173, 212 

Humanitarianism, 20, 21 

Hungary, 48, 51, 52, 53, 57, 6.1, 63, 139, 156 n., 



INDEX 



391 



157, 158, 160 n., 179, 197, 204 n., 207, 217, 

218, 223 n. 
"Huns," 146 

Hus, Jan, 49 n., 169, 200 
Hussitism, 114, 199 
Hutchins, Robert, 253, 253 n., 367 
Huxley, Aldous, 269, 368 
Huxley, Thomas, 281 

Ianovici, D., 150 n. 

Ibsen, Hendrik, 28 

Iceland, 306 

Idealism (enforced), 79 

Identity (of man and woman), 93 

"idento-sexual heredity," 95 

Ignatius of Loyola, 135 n. 

Illiteracy, 66, 268 

Illusion and Illusionists, 44 n. 

Imagination, 267-270 

Immigration (to the U.S.), 230, 232, 233, 235, 

236, 268 
Imperial Wizzard, 190 
Imperialism, 112 n. 
Importance of Individual in "Democracies," 44, 

44 n. 
Independence (lack of), 85-86; (American), 226- 

227 
Independence, declaration of, 24, 25, 117, 228 
Independent Social Democrats, 185 n., 192 
India, 8, 37, 218 

Indians (American), 51, 211 n., 236, 268 
Individualism, 22, 59, 115 
Industrial products (identity of), 86 
Industrial Revolution, 186, 193, 202, 213 
Industrialism, 22, 87, 311 
Inge, Dean, 299, 325, 329 
Ingermanland (Inkeri), 148, 148 n. 
Innsbruck, 165 

Inquisition (Germany and Austria), 159 n. 
Instruction, religious, 210 
Insurance companies, 100 

Inter-class relations in the Catholic world, 25 
Interest (on money), 51 
Intermarriage (racial), 238 
International, Second, 90. 199 
Internationalism, 22, 195 
Interpretation of history, economic. 287-288 
Interrelationship of cultural phenomena, 37-38 
Iowa, 240 

Ireland (and the Irish), 52, 172 n., 223, 225, 261 
Isabel la Catolica, 93, 139 
Isis, 258 

Isolation (of England), 222, 225 
Isolationism (in World War II), 237 n.. 282 n., 

289 
Isonzo Valley, 145 
Israelitism, British, 114 
Italians, 197; (in U.S.), 238 
Italy, 52, 54 n., 128, 144-145, 144 n., 179, 180. 

194, 204 n., 207, 208, 220, 243 n., 278 
Iturbide I, Mexican Emperor, 121 

Jackson, Andrew, 7, 60, 226, 229, 230 n., 239, 312 

Jackson Square, 226 

Jacobins, 204 

Jacobites, 78 

Jacquerie, 215 

Jahn, F. L„ 131 

James I, 28, 112 

James II, 47, 216 

James, William, 329 

Jan (John) III, Sobieski, 122 

Jansenism, 261, 262 



Japan, 52, 109 n„ 222 

Japanese, 236 

Jarrett, Bede, O.P., 345 

Jeanne d'Arc, St., 93 

Jefferson, Thomas, 4, 5, 24 n„ 60, 228, 246, 
266 n., 330, 356-366 

"Jeffersonian Democracy," 4, 5, 332 

Jena, 216 

Jerrold, Douglas, 126, 223 n., 369, 375 

Jerusalem, 305 

Jesuits, 28, 139 n., 175, 175 n., 263, 265, 281 

Jews, 24, 27, 51, 114, 139, 150, 158, 166 n., 
167, 171 n., 186, 186 n., 197, 198, 203, 208, 
209 n., 210, 217 n., 218, 236, 239, 259 n. 

Joffre, J. J. C, 127 n. 

John of the Cross, St., see: San Juan de la Cruz 

John the Evangelist, St., 24 

John II, Lackland, 227 

Johnston, Dr. Samuel, 214 

Johnston, Sir Harry, 336 

Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, 113 

Joyce, James, 261 n. 

Juan de la Cruz, San, 85 n. 

Judas (Iscariot), 24 

Judiciary (independence of), 249-250 

Juliana of Holland, Princess, 303 n. 

Jung, Dr. Edgar, 185 n., 351, 357 

Junger, Ernst, 83, 314 n., 331, 378 

Junkers (of Prussia), 185, 190, 212 

K's, Three (Kinder, Kiicke, Kirche), 96 

Kalb, Baron de, 226 

Kansas, 240, 279 

Kant, Immanuel, 66, 182, 190 

Kaplan, Dora, 94 

Karagjorgjevic (Serb Dynasty), 119, 144 

Karelia, 148, 148 n. 

Kirolyi, Count Michael, 48, 49 n. 

Kastriota, George (Skanderbeg) , 88 

Katayev, Valentin, 278 

Kaufman, Theodore, 216, 216 n. 

Kecskemeti, P., 366 

Keller, M., 350 

Kent, Duke of, 235 

Kentucky, 232 

Kerensky, Alexander, 95 

Key, Ellen, 94 

Keynes, J. M., 347, 348, 349, 364 

Keyserling, Count Hermann, 168, 351, 356, 372 

Kierkegaard, Soren. 66 

Kirchwey, Freda, 13, 335 

Klapka, Gyorgy, 48 

Klebelsberg, Count Kuno. 67 

Knight (and warrior), 22 

Knights of Columbus, 261 

Knirsch, Hans, 201 n. 

Know-Nothings, 236, 261 

Knox, Ronald, 378 

Koestler, Arthur, 201 n., 343 

Kohlhaas, Michael, 308 

Kohnstamm, Prof. Philip. 327 

Kohr, Hans, 354 

Kollar, Jan, 130 

Kollontay (Kollontaj), Alexandra, 94 

Kolnai, Aurel, 377 

Kondylis (Kondyles), Georgios, 127 n. 

Kopald, Sylvia, 335 

Korea, 225 

Kosciuszko, Tadeusz. 226 

Kossuth, Lajos (Louis), 48, 159 n. 

Kotoshikhin, 234 

Kraemer, Dr. Caspar, 367 

Kremlin, 125, 266, 290, 297 



392 



INDEX 



Kriehuber, Joseph, 124 
Krist6ffy, J6zsef, 106 n. 
Krizhanitch, G., 163 
Kropotkin (Krapotkin), Peter, 79 
Krupp (works and family), 147, 224 n., 230, 299 
Krupskaya, N. K., 94 
Krzesynski, Andrew, 334 
Ku Klux Klan, 236, 261 

Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Erik, and Christine von, 21, 
69 n., 115 n., 208 n., 278, 283 n., 323, 355, 373 
Kuhlmann, Richard von, 149, 345, 346, 376 
Kiihn, Dr. Erich, 285 n. 
Kuncz, Aladar, 201 n. 

Labor (as a course), 99, 100 

Labor camps, female, in Germany, 96 n. 

Labor Party of Great Britain, 146, 220 

La Cecilia, 55 

Ladoga, Lake, 148 n. 

Lafargue, P., 372 

Lafayette, Marquis de, M. J. P., 117, 226 

Lafltte, E., 249 n. 

Lagash (craftsmen of), 268 

Landtman, Gunnar, 336 

Lane, A. W., and L. H. Hall, 348 

Langensalza, battle of, 180 

Language, 129, 129-130 

Lansbury, George, 225 

Lapland, 278 

Laski, Harold, 75 n., 357, 375 

Lasswell, H. D., 3 SO 

Latgalia, 148, 149 

Latgalians, 53, 172 n. 

Latvia, 53, 139 n., 148, 149, 150 

Lavoisier, Antoine, 117 

Lawrence, D. H., 79 

Laymen (amateurs), 193-194, 241, 243 n., 244, 

244 n., 316 
Lea, Homer, 350 

Leaders, 115, 300; vs. rulers, 313; national, 361 
Leaders (socialist and communist), 372 
League, German, 177, 178 
League of Nations, 32, 152, 305 
Leakage (of religious bodies), 259 
"Lebenskiinstler" 99 
Lebensraum, 202, 280 
Lecky, William, 331 
Leftist and Leftism, 7, 17, 21, 90, 90-91, 129, 

184, 213, 270 
Legaz y Lacambra, Dr., 342 
Legitimacy, 120 
Leiningen-Westerburg, count, 48 
Lenin, Vladimir, Ilyitch, 24, 36, 49 n., 279 
Leo III, Pope, 164 
Leo XIII, Pope, 54, 135 n., 185 
Leontieff, Constantin, 327, 332 
Lersch, Heinrich, 62 
LevSe-en-masse, 121, 123 
Lewis, John L. (of C.I.O.), 135 n. 
Lewis, Sinclair, 253 n., 334 
Leyden, Jan van, 41 
Liberalism, 3, 60, 117, 152, 204 n., 213, 214, 

242, 264 
Liberals, 180-181, 192, 204, 204 n., 214 
Liberty, 8, 22, 26, 78-79, 127, 226, 227 n., 257- 

258, 272, 296, 318 
Liberty Bell, 297 
Library of Congress, 246 
Limes-theory, 1 72 n. 
Lincoln, Abraham, 232, 236 
Lippmann, Walter, 360, 374 
Lisbon, 239 
Lithuanians, 53, 150, 172 n. 



Lloyd-George, David, 42 n., 127 n., 147, 151, 152, 

347 
Locke, Alain, 371 
Lockhart, Bruce, 106 n. 
Lollardy, 113 

London, 84, 114 n., 145, 146, 299, 304 
Lords, House of, 218, 219 
Lorraine, 165 

Los-von-Rom, Protestant propaganda, 182 
Louis, King of France, St., 264 
Louis, Missouri, St., 232 
Louis I, of Bavaria, 106, 198 
Louis II, of Bavaria, 106, 189 
Louis II, of Hungary and Bohemia, 180 
Louis XI, of France, 215 
Louis XIV, 47, 107, 113, 119, 173 
Louis XV, 133 
Louis XVI, 216 
Louis XVIII, 216 
Louisiana, 232 
Love, 20, 99, 265 
Low, David, 224 
Lowenstein, family of, 250 
Loyola, 272 
Lucknow, 168 
Ludendorff, Erich, General (or his wife), 96 n., 

146, 149, 171, 317 n., 346 
Lundberg, Ferdinand, 287 
Lusatia, 165, 172 
Luther, Martin, 41, 51, 12?, 165, 170, 171 n., 

187 n., 245, 325, 352, 357 
Lutheran Cyclopedia, 357 
Lutheranism, 114, 174 
Lutherans, 52, 218, 258 
Liitzen, battle of, 174 n. 
Luxemburg, Imperial Dynasty of, 168 
Luxemburg, Rosa, 98 
LycSe, French, 76, 97, 254 
Lynch, Judge (Lynching), 196, 249-250 
Lyon, Dr. Leverett, S., 34 

M.I.T., 97 

MacArthur & Long (coauthors), 224 n. 

Macartney, C. A., 363 

Macauley, Lord, 378 

MacDonald, Ramsay, 127 n. 

Machiavelli, Nicolo, 144 

Machine Age, 316 

MacKenzie, Compton, 327, 348 

MacLaughlin, A. C, 5 

MacLeish, Archibald, 275 

MacPherson, Aimee Semple, 94, 258 

Madariaga, Salvador de, 239 n., 342 

Madison, James, 3, 4, 5, 12 

Madol, Hans Roger, 106 n. 

Madrid, 237, 239 

Maeterlinck, Count Maurice, 136, 224 

Magazines, 87 

Magdeburg (rape of), 108 

Magna Charta Libertatum, 47, 217, 217 n. 

Magyars, 172 n.; (Hungarians), 197 

Maine, 256, 266 

Maine, Sir Henry, 331 

Maintenon, Madame de, 93 

Maistre, Joseph de, 66 

Majoritarianism (Majoritism), 55, 248 

Majority, 5, 6, 43-44 

Mammonism, 90 

Manchester, 242 n., 280 

Manchuria, 222 

Manchus, 182 

Manet, Edouard, 181 

Manhattan, 278 



INDEX 



393 



Maniu, Julius, 127 n. 

Mann, Thomas, 20 n., 194 n. 

Mannheim, Karl, 378 

Manzoni, Allessandro, 124 

Marc Aurelius, 103 

March, Juan, 230 

Marghiloman, Alexander, 149 

Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria, 94, 107, 129, 

176, 298 
Marie Antoinette of France, 119, 215 
Marina, Princess of Greece, 235 
Maritain, Jacques, 23, 76 n., 105, 254 n., 324, 

326, 327, 339, 378 
Marlborough, duke of, 219 
Marriage, civil, 204, 204 n., 285 
Marsilius of Padua, 113 

Marx, Karl, 35, 105, 182, 213, 318, 316 n. 
Marxism, 91 
Mary Magdalen, St., 26 
Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, 93 
Maryland, 261 

Masaryk, Thomas G., 141, 158, 350 
Mason, George, 24 n. 
Massachusetts, 246 n. 
Mass-emotions, 146 
Masses, 317 
Mathias Corcinus, 107 
Mattingly, Garrett, 166 n. 
Maughan, Somerset, 219 n. 
Maupassant, Guy de, 181 
Mauriac, Francois, 32, 44 n. 
Maurras, Charles, 105, 249 
Maximilian I, the "Last Knight," 298 
Maximilian I, of Bavaria, 198 
Mayakovsky, Vladimir, 208 
Mayer, J. P., 105 n., 361, 366, 373 
Maynard. Theodore, 259 n. 
Mazzini, 198, 339 
Measurability of Achievements, 252 
Mecca, 52 n. 

Medieval Studies, Pontifical Institute of, 263 
Medici, Catherine de, 93 
Mediocrity, 282 
Megalopolis, 17, 22, 85 
Mein Kamp), 203 
Meinecke, Friedrich, 346 
Mellon, Andrew, 250 
Memory, human, 244 n. 
Mencken, H. L., 82, 230 n., 328, 343, 368 
Menczel, Philipp, 158 n. 
Mendeleyev, D. I., 68 
"Men in White," 23, 270 
Mercenaries, 107-108 
Mercier, Louis, 325 
Merovingians, 233 

Messianism, national, 114, 221, 236, 309 
Metaxas, John, 127 n. 
Metric system, 120 
Metternich, 45, 123, 140 
Mexico, 53, 91, 278 
Michaelis, Georg, 147 
Michels, Robert, 356, 373 
Middle Ages, 18, 33, 51, 53, 58, 83, 100, 107, 

112, 133, 152, 158, 209, 210n., 221, 241 n., 257 
Middle Class, 51, 63, 130, 139, 210, 223, 277, 

372 
Middle West (in the U.S.), 130, 240 
Militarism, 22, 118, 168, 212 
Military Manual (U.S.), 11 
Mill, John Stuart, 176 n., 327, 332, 343 
Millennium of Progress, 36 
Milton, John, 204, 289, 319 



Minorities, 120, 187, 210 

Minshall, Colonel T. H„ 166 n. 

Mirabeau, Andre B., Marquis de Riquetti, 41, 117 

Miscegenation, 238 

Mississippi (state of), 238 n. 

Mitchison, Naomi, 329 

Mithras, 258 

Moabites, 236 

Mobocracy, 1 1 

Modernism (religious), 135 

Modem Man (his demoralization), 211 

Mohammedanism, 144 

Mohammedans, 173 

Molina, Molinism, 265 

Moltke, Hellmuth von, 177 

Monarchs, 132, 133, 301, 312-313 

Monarchy, 22, 46-49, 103 ft., 108, 112-113, 119, 

120, 121, 122, 124-125, 138, 149 n., 227, 266 
Monet, Claude, 181 
Money, 240, 251 
Monolithic State of Society, 96 
Monotony (in U.S.), 240, 268, 271 
Montalembert, Ch. F. R. Comte de, 101, 324 
Montana (Croats of), 266 
Montenegro, 145, 146, 150 n. 
Montesquieu, Charles Louis, 6, 49 n., 340, 345 
Montez, Lola, 198 
Montrose, James, Duke of, 88 
Monypenny and Buckle, 345 
Moravia, 154, 158, 171; Germans of, 200 
Moravian Brethren, 158 
Morgan, J. P., 250 
Morison, S. E., 346 
Moroccan Crisis, 142 
Morrow, Ian, trans., 345, 354 
Moscow, 16, 35, 46, 97; trials of, 114, 127, 278 
Moss (MacNeil), Geoffrey. 100 
Motion pictures, 269 ff. 
Mountains, 22, 126-128 
Mueller, Franz H„ 336 

Multiplication as essence of modern production. 65 
Mumford, Lewis, 209 n., 344, 371. 374 
Munich, 34, 90, 167, 198, 199, 359; Conference 

of, 157, 220 
Munzer, Thomas, 41 
Muret, Charlotte, 323 
Museum of Modern Art, 10 
Mussolini, Benito, 127 n., 212 n., 306 
Mussorgsky, M, P., 68 
Mutinies, naval, 80 n. 
M(y)erezhkovski, Dimitri, 27, 68. 291 n., 309, 

326, 330, 339, 373 
Mysteries (in the modern world), 69-71 
Mystical Body of Christ, 133 

N.E.P., 290 n. 

Nadolny, Rudolf, 172 n„ 352 

Nantes, Edict of, 173 

Napoleon I, 113, 121, 122, 123, 216, 306 

Napoleon III, 121 

Nassau-Oranje, House of, 303 n. 

Nation (ethnic), 120 n., 302 n. 

National Liberalism, 181 

National Socialism, 18, 73, 96, 114, 155, 159, 160, 
178, 182, 183, 185, 189 ff., 202, 205 n., 205, 
206, 207, 208-209, 212, 214, 215, 223, 238 n„ 
258 n., 259, 280, 283 n., 284-286, 288-289 

National Socialist Party, Czech, 199 ff. 

National Socialist Party, German, 45, 69 n., 96 n., 
131, 157, 194 n., 199-201, 212 n., 285 n„ 361 

Nationalism, 21, 112 n., 116, 118, 135, 182, 195, 
201-202, 286, 296 



394 



INDEX 



Naumann, Friedrich, 328 

Navy (U.S.), 249 

Neese, Gottfried, 361 

Nef, J. V., 369, 371 

Negro, Negroes, 203, 236-239, 237 n., 239 n. 

Nehemias, Prophet, 209 n. 

Neo-Hussites, 158, 169 n. 

Nero, 103 

Nerval, Gustave de, 17, 115 

Neue Sachlichkeit, 97, 188, 188 n. 

Neuilly, 151, 159 

Neumann, Franz, 187 n., 330, 361 

Neumann, Sigmund, 378 

Nevada, 232 

New Deal, 241-243, 242 n., 244, 258, 289 

New Republic, The, 368 

Newman, Ernest, 181 

Newman, John H., Cardinal, 332 

Newman, Joseph, 109 n. 

New Mexico, 232 

New Orleans, 266 

New York, 60, 159 n., 187, 192, 204 n., 211 n., 

237, 239, 256, 307 
Nibelungen Saga, 290 
Nickerson, Hoffman, 340, 346, 347 
Nicole, Socialist Leader in Geneva, 32 
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 66, 137, 176 n., 181, 191, 

204, 281, 344, 352 
Nineteenth Century, 45, 255 n. 
Nitti, Francesco, 347 
Nizza (Nice), 144 n. 
Neailles, Adrian, due de, 41, 117 
Nock, Albert Jay, 3, 368 
Nordic Socialist Congress, 188 
Norrkoping, 68 
Norway, 82 n., 139 n., 303 

Novalis (Freiherr v. Hardenberg), 170, 204, 371 
Noyon, 32 
Nuffield, Lord, 230 
Numbers, worship of, 208, 251-253 
Nuremberg, Parteitag of, 16, 187; laws of, 229 
Nys, Ernest, 144 n., 347 

Oberdan(k), Guglielmo, 154 n. 

O'Connell, Dr. Geoffrey, 325 

Odoakar, 240 

O'Faolain, Sean, 261 n., 364, 370 

Offenbach, Jacques, 198 

Officialdom, 243, 250, 302, 310 

O'Flaherty, Liam, 261 n. 

Oglow, S., 125 

Old Testament, 208, 213 

Oliver, James, 330 

Olmfltz (Olomouc), 187 

Opium Wars, 225 

Orel (Slovak organization), 131 

Organic character of Nations, 39-40 

Organization, 98 

Ors, Eugenio d', 44 n. 

Ortega y Gasset Jose, 18, 35, 92, 100, 105, 330, 

337, 340, 344, 356 
Ostracism, 250 
Ostrogorski, M. Y., 369 

Paine, Thomas, 266 
Palatinate, 51, 170 
Pangermanism, 129 
Pan-Italism, 130 
Pankhurst, Sylvia, 94 
Pan-Latinism, 130 
Pan-Slavism, 130, 141, 291 n. 



Pan-Teutonism, 130 

Pantheism, 132 

Pantheon, 297 

Parcifal, 267 

Pareto, Vilfredo, 49 n. 

Paris, 11, 17, 78, 90, 107, 117, 129, 144 n., 146 

Parliament (British), 191-193 

Parliamentarism, 138, 191, 192-193, 246, 300, 302 

Parson, Wilfred, S.J., 338 

Parties (Political), 173 

Partyrule, 316 

Patagonians, 40 

Patifio, Simon, 134 n. 

Patmore, Coventry, 332 

Patriarchal principle, 110-111 

Patriotism, 112 n., 118, 296, 301 

Patterson News, 332 

Paul, Jean (Richter), 315 

Paul, St., 99, 204 

Peace ballot, 220 n. 

Peace Treaties, 121-122 

Peasants, 16, 61-62, 68-69, 140, 207 

Pedocracy, 115 

Peers, Allison, 328, 368 

Pekar, Joseph, 169 n. 

Penal Laws (of Britain), 159 

Penck, Professor A., 141 n. 

Persia, 278 

Personalism (Person, Personalist), 22, 59, 115, 

132, 284, 300, 309 
Pesth (see also Budapest), 130 
Pitain, Marshal Henri Philippe, 119 n. 
Peter I, the Great, of Russia, 107, 113, 291 n. 
Peter III, of Russia, 303 n. 
Petko, Stainov, 340 
Petlyura, Symon, 148 
Petrie, Sir Charles, 220 n., 347, 350, 355 
Petsamo (Petchenga), 149 
Petseri, 148, 149 
Petzoldt, Alphons, 62 
Peyrere, Rev. La, 237 n. 
Phelan, Gerald B., Ph.D., 338 
Philadelphia, 11 

Philip IV, the Handsome, of France, 215 
Philip II, of Spain, 107, 140 
Philistines, 236 
Philosophy, 254 n. 
Pierce, F., 7 
Pittas, 214, 312 
Pike, Albert, 54 
Pilate, 250 
Piloty, Karl v., 199 
Pilsudski, Jozef, 48 

Pithecanthropus erectus Dubois, 34, 153 
Pitt-Rivers, George, 357 
Pittsburgh, 37 
Pius XI, 111 

Pius IX, Pope, 27, 260, 264, 270, 326, 
Pizarro, Francisco, 236 
Plains (lowlands), 22, 126, 128 
Planetta, Otto, 154 n. 
Planning, 311 n. 

Plato, 7, 10, 105, 111, 120, 151, 262 n., 338 
Playne, Caroline F., 349 
Plebiscites, 206, 210 
Ploscowe, Morris, 369 
Plutocracy, 250-251 
Po, river, 238 n. 
Poincarf, Raymond, 349 
Poland, 47, 53, 107, 121-122, 131, 132, 150, 

154, 155, 174, 176, 207, 223 n., 225, 290, 290 n. 
Poles, 167, 182, 197, 202, 211 



INDEX 



395 



Politicians, 151, 152, 317 n. 

Politics, 333 

Polytheism, modern, 257-258 

Pomerania(ns), 212, 299 

Pomerelia, 176 

Pompadour, Marquise de, 93 

Pompillos and Perkunos, 176 

Popes, 58, 111, 135, 146-147, 147 n., 164, 291 

Popularity, 246, 312 

Portugal, 52, 93, 138, 139, 153, 303, 304, 306 

Portuguese Legion, 194 n. 

Posen (Poznan), 154, 179 

Post, Emily, 234, 257 

Postdam, 317 

Poum, 90 

Power, 134, 134 n. 

Pozzi, Henri, 143, 347 

Prague (Praha), 140, 165, 169 

Pravoslavs, 54 

Preadamitic Theory, 237 n. 

Predestination, 22 

Premarital health examinations, 204 n. 

Presbyterians, 258 

President (see also Roosevelt), 286 n., 312; of 
Germany, 313 n. 

Preuss, Dr. Hugo, 183 

Priests, 210 

Princip, Gavrilo, 154 n. 

Print, worship of, 55-56 

Prisoners of war, 145-146 

Progress, 58, 84, 205, 241-242, 262 

Prohibition: see Antialcoholic legislation 

Proletariat (urban), 4, 184, 206, 277-279 

Propaganda, 145-146, 157 

Property, 4 

Prosperity, 3 

Protestantism, 28, 90, 171, 214, 266 n., 267, 270 

Protestants, 53, 119, 139, 146, 152 

Proudhon, P. J., 15, 105, 328, 334, 341 

Prussia and Prussians, 51, 80, 128, 142, 144 n., 
154, 168, 168 n., 172 n„ 173-176, 176 n., 178, 
179-180, 198, 212, 213, 222, 282, 289, 299, 317 

Pruzzi (Prussians), 176 n. 

Przywara, Erich, S.J., 169, 191 

Public School, 73-74, 75, 219-220, 235, 251 n. 

Publicity, 234-235 

Pulaski, Kazimierz Count, 226 

Puritanism, 262 

Pushkin, Alexander, 68, 183 n. 

Pygmees of Central Africa, 40 

Quadragesimo Anno, 112 

Quality, 60, 263, 300 

Quantity, 60, 251-253, 263, 300, 301, 317 

Quebec (Act), 227 

Quota Laws (of 1924), 236, 238 n. 

Race, Racialism, 27, 112, 136, 193, 195, 203, 

235-240 
Racial Superiority, 225 
Radbruch, Gustav, 342 
Radeck, Karl, 149 
Radziwill, family of, 250 
Randall, Henry, 378 
Rasputin, 18 

Rauschning, Hermann, 378 
Reason (worship of), 32 
Reavey, George, trans., 329 
Records, 251-253 
Red Cross, 32 
Reformation, 50, 147 n., 172 



"Reich" (explanation of), 165-166 

Reichstag, 185, 192, 193, 239, 358 

Relativism, religious, 257 ff. 

Religion, 39, 39 n., 257-258, 270 

Renaissance, 1 72 

Renan, Ernest, 54, 316 n., 354 

Reparations, 154 n. 

Representation, popular, 246-248 

Representative government, 43, 256, 315-316 

Republic, 1, 2, 3, 122, 138, 227 n. 

Responsibility, 185 

"Ressentiment," 98 

Revolution, 299, 300, 301; Industrial, 124; 

American, 227 
Reynold, Gonzague de, 105, 338, 339, 340, 353 
Rhode Island, 266 
Richmond, Va., 249 
Richter, Ludwig, 124 
Riehl, Dr. Walter, 200 
Rimbaud, Jean Arthur, 181 
Rimsky-Korsakov, Nicolas, 68 
Ring (weekly), 3S7 
Risorgimento, 128, 131-132, 181 
Rivarol, 103, 277 
Robert, Kenneth, 368 
Robeson, Paul, 236 

Robespierre, 24, 41, 55, 190, 216, 266, 308 
Robles, Gil, 91 
Rochambeau, Comte de, 226 
Rockefeller, John D., 250 
Romanov, House of, 303 n. 
Romantic Movement, 18 
Romanticism, 124 

Rome, 46, 108, 165, 209, 221, 222, 257, 268, 305 
Romier, Lucien, 332, 334, 341, 342 
Rdnay, Gabor de, 307 n. 
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 9, 232, 314 
Roosevelt, Theodore, 159 n., 241-243, 262 
Rope, Reverend G. E., 350 
Rosenberg, Alfred, 190, 318, 357, 361 
Rosenberg, Dr. Arthur, 345, 354 
Roses, war of, 217 
Rotterdam, destruction of, 108 
Rougemont, Denis de, 323, 354 
Rougier, Louis, 340, 377 
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 32, 41, 62, 128, 153, 

213, 227-228, 327 
Royal families, 105-106, 110, 119 
Rozanov, Vassili, 380 
Rubinstein, Antoni, 187 
Rugg, Harold, 56 n. 
Rulers, 300, 313 
Rumania, 145, 149, 150, 150 n„ 158, 159 n., 

160 n., 214 
Russ (Moscovian), 233; (Kievian and Mosco- 

vian), 291 n. 
Russia, Imperial, 8, 54 n., 57, 94 n., 144, 144 n., 

145, 168, 173, 229, 254, 303 
Russia (Soviet Union), 82 n., 95, 98, 148, 149, 

153, 194, 206, 210, 219, 239, 244, 255, 260 n., 

279, 290-293, 295, 296-297 
Russian Language, 167 n. 
Russian Prisoners, 145 
Russian Revolution, 145 
Russians, 211 
Ruthenians, 141, 172 n. 

Sachsenhausen (concentration camp), 34 

Sacro egoismo, 208 n. 

Sade, Marquis de, 285 n. 

Sadova (Koniggratz), battle of, 181 

Saint, as human ideal, 72-73 



396 



. INDEX 



St. Germain-en-Laye, Treaty of, 148, 151, 153 n., 

155, 159 
St. Patrick's Cathedral, 262 
St. Robert Bellarmine, see Bellarmine, St. Robert 
Salamanca, University of, 236 
Salazar, Dr. Oliveira, 127 n., 236 
Samaritans, 208 
Sancho Fansa, 25 

Sanctions (against Italy), 220 n., 222 
Sanctity, 58 
Sanger, Margaret, 94 
Santayana, George, 250 n., 326 
Sassmann, Hanns, 353 
Saturday Review, 350 
Saturnius, 258 
Savannah, 226 
Savoy, 127 n., 144 n. 
Saxony, 106, 129, 179, 180 n. 
Saxony, Marshal Moritz, of, 133 
Sayous, AndrS Emile, 346 
Scandinavia, 60 
Schamhorst, Gerhard v., 177 
Scheler, Max, 168 n. 
Schickeld, RenS, 348 
Schiller, Friedrich v., 127, 204 
Schism, Eastern, 54 
Schlaff, David S., 365 
Schlegel, Friedrich v., 124 
Schleicher, General Kurt v., 194 
Schmidt-Gibichenfels, Dr., 328 
Schmidt, Wilhelm, 49 n. 
Schmitt, Carl, 326 
Schneider (Creusot), 230 
Schonbrunn, 176, 197 
Schonburg, family of, 250 
Schonerer, Georg Ritter v., 54 
Schramm, Dr. Edmund, 354 
Schreiner, Gert, 350 
Schubert, Franz, 204 
Schuschnigg, Dr. Kurt v., 196, 210 n. 
Schwarzenberg, family of, 250 
Schwind, Moritz von, 124 
Schwob, Ren6, 44 n. 
Sciences, 205, 254 n. 
Scotland, 170, 223 n. 
Scottish Highlanders, 57, 172 n. 
Scott, James Brown, 347 
Scottsborough, case of, 237 
Seamen, psychology of, 80, 80 n. 
Security, 22, 278; social, 242 n., 311 
Sedan, battle of, 181 
Seifert, J. L., 49 n., 341 
Seipel, Dr. Ignaz, 198 
Selchow, Bogislaw v., 356 
Self-determination, 308 
Sempach, battle of, 31 
Separatism, 48 n. 

Serbia, 8, 144, 145, 150 n., 160 n. 
Serbs, 167 

Serfdom, 83, 136, 137 
Sertorius, 88 
Servants, 34 

Serviere, Joseph de la, S.J., 365 
Seton-Watson, R. W., 140, 159, 198, 363 
Sevres, 1S7 
Sex, 19 

Shah of Persia, 60 
Shakespeare, William, 289 
Shamyl, Emir of Daghestan, 88 
Shay, Frank, 268 
Shelley, P. B., 79 



Shimabara, 52 

Shinto and Shintoists, 52, 221 

Sh&gun, 52 

Siberia, 94 n. 

Sicily (Two Sicilies), 132, 306 

Sidis, Boris, 329 

Silesia, Upper, 154, 155, 171 

Simmel, Georg, 323, 334, 341, 369 

Simpson- Affair, 235 

Simson, Eduard v., 177 

Sittich, Dr. Oscar, 180 n. 

Sixtus, Prince of Bourbon-Parma, 147 

Skepticism, 240 

Skoropadsky, Pavlo, 148 

Skryabin, Alexander N., 68 

Slankamen, battle of, 180 

Slavery, 33, 229 

Slavs, 172, 228 

Slesvig, 141 

Slovakia, 141, 220 n., 223 n. 

Slovaks, 157 n., 268 

Slovenes, 157 n. 

Slovenia, 223 n. 

Smith and Elder, 339 

Smith, Howard K., 375 

Smith, Joseph, 258 

Snobism, 35, 98 

Social Democrats (Central Europe), 192, 241 

Social Equity, 224 

Social Register, 35, 234 

Social security, see security 

Socialism (see also Capitalism, State), 98, 130 n. 

134, 135, 181, 212, 250-251, 286 
Socialists, 146, 197, 199 
Society, 72-73, 218, 232 
Soil, 194-197 
Sokol organization, 130 
Solesmes, 272 

Solovyov, Vladimir, 68, 209, 257, 279, 330, 337 
Sombart, Werner, 37 n., 98, 287, 244 
Somerset, Duke of, the Protector, 338 
Sonderbund, 282 

Sonnino, Baron Sidney, 54 n., 350 
Sorel, Georges, 334, 345 
Sorokin, Pitirim A., 331, 367 
Sosnosky, Theodor v., 106 n. 
South Africa, 52, 173, 225 
South America, 53 
South Carolina, 228 
Southampton, 215 
Soviet Films, 21 
Soviet Union, see Russia 

Spain, 52, 90, 91, 207, 222, 223 n„ 253, 278 
Spaniards, 211 
Spanish Civil War, 21, 266 
Speed, 35, 92 
Spencer, Herbert, 368, 372 
Spengler, Oswald, 46, 61, 66, 69, 105, 241, 328, 

333 
Spinoza, Baruch, 132 
Spoil system, 230 n. 
Stage trials, 118, 118 n. 
Stahl, Julius, 180 n. 
Stalin, 33, 127 n. 
Stamm, Dr. Eugen, 342 
Standardization, 86, 119-120 
Stapleton, A. G„ 116 
Starkie, Walter, 343 
State, 72-73, 134 
State Department, U. S., 150, 249 
Statesmen (vs. politicians), 151 



INDEX 



397 



Statism (fitatisme), 112 n., 135 

Steed, Wickham H., 140, 159, 197-198, 350 

Stein, Heinrich Freiherr v., 177 

Stephen, king of Hungary, St., 130 

Stephens, Sir James, 331 

Sterilization, 304 

Stettin, 299 

Steuben, Baron Friedrich v., 226 

Stirk, Dr. S. D., 354 

Stoa, 37 

Stockholm, 60, 146 

Stoddard, Lothrop, 213, 236 

Stolberg-Stolberg, brothers, Christian and Friedrich 
Leopold, 124 

Stolberg-Wernigerode, Count Albrecht, 146, 147 n. 

Stopes, Mary, 94 

Strasbourg, Magistrate of, 22, 116 

Stratification, social, in U. S., 232-233 

Strauss, Johann, 140 

Streicher, Julius, 171 n., 239 

Strube, Sidney, 224 

Stuart, House of, 282, 300 

Stiirgkh, Count Carl, 198 

Styles, architectural, 268, 268 n. 

Suarez, Francisco, 112, 236, 263 

Suburbia, 224, 279 

Success, 282-283 

Sudermann, Hermann, 181 

Sudeten Germans, 169 n. 

Suffrage (see also General Franchise), 57, 58 

Sulpice, St., 261 

Supranationalism, 22 

Supreme Court (U.S.), 227; for European Coun- 
tries, 301 

Suso, Heinrich, 169 

Sweden, 54 n., 172, 242 n. 

Swiss, 167 

Switzerland, 31, 51, 61, 80, 80 n., 82 n., 91, 
129 n., 139, 147, 149 n., 170, 181, 197 

Swoboda, Hermann, 334 

Syllabus (see also Pius IX), 264 

Sylvester I, Pope, St., 113 

Taborites, 169 n., 199 

Taine, Hypolite, 131 n. 

Talleyrand, Charles M., Due de., 45, 109 

Talmud, 208 

Tamerlane (Timour Lenkh), 121 

Tampere (Tammerfors) , 95 

Tanquerey, A., 337 

Tauler, Johann, 169, 209 

Tavernier, E., 257 

Taxes, 209 n. 

Taxpayer, 94 

Taylor, Alonzo, 183 n. 

Teacher's College, Columbia, 26 

Technicism, 267, 310-311 

Technocrats, 91 

Technology, 82-83 

Teeling, William, 303 n. 

Teheran, 239 

Teleki, Count Ladislas, 48 

Templars, suppression of, 215 

Teresa of Avila, St., 93, 251-253 
Terijoki, 206 
Theocentrism, 22 
Theology, 254 n. 
Therese of Lisieux, St., 204 
Thibon, Gustave, 24, 324, 371 
"Third Empires" (Russia and Germany, see also 
Empire and Reich), 291-292 



Thirty Years' war, 123 
Thokbly, Emmeric, 52 
Thomas Aquinas, St., 8, 10, 51, 62, 80 n., 105, 

110, 111, 209 n., 223, 262 n., 263, 265, 338, 

369 
Thomas More, St., 211 
Thomism, 265, 265 n. 
Thyssen, August, 230 
Ticino (Swiss Canton), 80 n. 
Time, 85 

Times (London), 346 
Tinkham, Mr., 246 n. 
Titles, 224 n., 250 n. 
Tocqueville, Alexis Comte de, 25, 66, 105, 270, 

291, 293 ff., 344 
Tolstoy, Count Leo, 61, 68 
Tomlinson, E. W. F„ 35 n. 
Tone, Wolf, 251 
Tories (in England and America), 47, 48, 109, 

217 ff., 227 
Toronto, Ontario, 263 
Totentanz, see Death Dance 
Toulouse-Lautrec, Hendri de, 181 
Tour du Pin, Marquis de la, 40, 336, 342 
Trade-Unions (in Germany), 194 
Transylvania, 141, 158 

Trautenau (Trutnov) meeting of Nazis, 200 
Treitschke, Heinrich v., 79, 182, 190, 191, 353 
Trianon, Treaty of, 148, 151, 153 n., 159, 349 
Troeltsch, Ernst, 361 
Trotter, William, 323 
Trotzki, Lev. D., 79, 105, 153, 149 
Trotzkyist conspirators, 97 
Trubetzkoy, Nikolay Prince, 332 
Truth, 77-78 

Tryepov, General Dimitri F., 94 
Tshaadayev, Pyotr Y., 79 
Tshaykovski, Peter Ilyitch, 68 
Tunisia, 144 n., 170 
Tupper, Kerr Boyse, 327 
Turgenyev, I. S., 68, 94 
Turkey, 139, 145, 150 n., 173 
Turks, 52, 52 n. 
Turnell, G. M., 363 
Tuscany, Grandduke of, 132 
Twentieth Century, 45 
Twentieth Century Americanism, 2 
Two-Party system, 75 
Tyranny, 3, 11, 120 

Tyrol, 60, 140, 144 n., 154, 196, 228 n., 299 
Tyrs, Miroslav, 131 n. 

U.G.T., 90 

Ukraine, 148 

Ultramontanes (Center Party), 141 

Unamuno, Miguel de, 329, 342, 343, 359, 360, 

373 
Undset, Sigrid, 370 
Uniformism, 257 ff., 295 
Unitarians, 258 

United Kingdom, see England or Great Britain 
United States of America, 34, 40, 40 n., 60, 61, 

82 n., 97 n., 98, 125, 138, 138 n., 139 n., 145, 

196, 214, 222, 226 ff., 231, 233-235, 241, 248, 

255-256, 278, 311 
Universities, 254-255, 255 n. 
Ur (craftsmen of), 268 

Utilitarianism, 190, 205 n., 213, 290, 290 n. 
Utopia and Progress, 35, 91 
Utrecht 165 

Valais (Swiss Canton) , 80 n. 



398 



INDEX 



Van der Bij, Dr. S. T., 336 

Vanderbilt, 250 

Vansittart, Lord, 216, 260, 361 

"Vaterlandische Front" (in Austria), 194 n., 196 n. 

Vatican, 88, 139 

Vaud (Swiss Canton), 80 n. 

Veblen, Thorstein, 167 n. 

Vendue, rising in the, 57, 117 

Venice, 48, 217 n. 

Venizelos, Elevtheros, 127 n. 

Verlaine, Paul, 181 

Vermont, 228, 266 

Vernunft and Verstand, 33 

Versailles, 151, 153, 153 n., 155, 183, 197, 213 

Verticalism, vertical order, 23, 88, 133, 134 n. 

Victor Emanuel III, 145 

Victoria, Queen, 106, 129 n., 236 

Vienna, 52, 60, 109, 123, 127, 142, 158. 160 n., 

165, 178, 197 8., 222, 297, 299 
Viereck, Peter, 131 n„ 355, 356, 371 
Vignaux, Paul, 342 
Village, rural community, 22, 63-64 
Villiers, Adam de, 346 
Vincent de Paul, St., 217 
Virchow, 281 
Virgil, 159 

Virginia, 24, 24 n.; Bluebook of, 24 
Vitoria, F. de, 347 
Voigt, F. A., 374 
Voldemaras, Dr. Augustin, 121 
Volga River, 303 
Volhynia, 145 

Volksempfanger, Volkswagen, 205 
Volstead Act, 243 n. 
Voltaire, F. M. Arouet, 54 
Volz, Dr. G. B., 175 n. 
Vyereshtshagin, V. V., 68 

Wagner, Cosima, 181 n. 

Wagner, Richard, 170, 181, 181 n., 190, 198, 

202, 236 
Walas, Graham, 343 
Waldeck- Rousseau, Pierre, 54 
Wall, Bernard, 333 
Wall Street, 97 
Waller, Willard, 367 
War-Guilt, see German Reich II, also German 

Reich III, 143-145, 151 
Wars, totalitarian, 107 
Warsaw, 108 
War spirit, 145-146 
Washington, D. C, 145, 226, 232, 239. 251, 

299, 304 
Washington, George, 3, 227 
Wasmann, Erich, S.J.. 136 
Watkin, E. I., 326, 330 
Watson, John B., 97 
Weber, Max, 261, 270, 342 
Weckerle, Sandor, 54 
Wecter, Dixon, 368 
Wegerer, A. v., 143 
Weimar (constitution and Republic), 20 n., 91 n., 

149 n., 155, 183, 184 n., 291 n. 
Weissenberg, J. (leader of sect), 18 
Wells, H. G., 36, 224 
Werner, Zacharias, 124 



Westerby, Robert, 332 

Westphalia, Treaty of, 123 

Westwall, 220 n. 

Whalen, Doran, 377 

Wheeler-Bennet, J., 149 n., 357, 374 

Whigs (in England or U.S.), 47, 48, 109, 217 ff., 

222, 226-227, 266, 310 
Whitehead, A. N., 333 
White House, 226 

Whitman, Walt, 13, 20 n., 189, 191, 236, 319 
Wiener-Neustadt, 165 
Wilde, Oscar, 20 n. 
Wildenbruch, Ernst v., 181 
William II, German Emperor, 106, 140, 141, 142, 

144, 147 n., 149, 155, 156, 173, 183 n„ 187, 

336, 345 
William III of England, 174, 174 n., 216 
Willkie, Wendell L„ 135 n., 314 
Wilson, Robert MacNair, 363 
Wilson, Woodrow, 147, 148, 152, 159 n„ 327, 

347-348 
Winkelried, Arnold, 88 
Witte, Count Sergej, 187 
Wittenberg, 53, 221 
Wolfe, Thomas, 359 
Women, 93 ff., 94, 97, 99 
Wood, Grant, 240 n. 
Wood, James N., 134 n„ 327, 342, 346, 366, 

367, 378 
Wood, L. J. S., 350 
Woods, Professor E., 336, 337 
Woodward, W. E„ 366 
Worker (his mentality), 62, 68-69 
World War I, 34, 137, 138 ff., 140, 141, 142, 

194 n., 213, 287, 287 n. 
World War II, 21, 140, 296-297 
World War III, 304, 307 
Wright, brothers, 84 
Wurttemberg, 182 

Wiirttembergians, 172 n., 179, 180 
Wust, Peter, 18, 32, 330 
Wycliffe, John, 113, 169 
Wyoming, 232 

Xenophon, 7 

Ximenez, Francisco de Cisneros, 45 

Yiddish, 167 n. 

Yoffe (Soviet diplomat), 149 

York, Ludwig, Count, 177 

Youth, worship of, 209 n. 

Ypres (Ypern), 108 

Yuan-Shi-Kai, 121 

Yugoslavia, 131, 156, 157, 157 n., 158, 159, 160 n. 

Zassulitch, Vyera, 94 

Zenta battle of, 180 

Zita, Empress of Austria, 119 

Zivikourage, 191, 191 n. 

Zizka of Trocnov, 169, 169 n. 

Zog I (Ahmed Zogu of Albania), 121 

Zola, Emile, 181, 345 

Zumalacarregui, Tomas, 88 

Zurbaran, Francisco de, 16 

Zweig, Stephan, 281 n.